Make Your Store Opening Grand

You’ve committed to HME retail. You’ve leased a location or built a new store. Now, since cash sales are your top priority, it’s time to build visibility and patronage. Begin with your real estate. Let the community know your store is established and ready to serve its home medical equipment needs.

The relationships you build during your retail launch can last for years, so the time it takes to plan and carry out a successful opening event — and the PR that goes with it — should be well worth the effort.

Here are some tips to make sure your store’s grand opening celebration (or a store remodeling or a retail category expansion) is an event that your potential customers will remember.

• Don’t wait to start your marketing plan until your store’s grand opening. Consider scheduling the grand opening event a month after the store opens. Give yourself time to train your staff, fine-tune displays and selection, schedule vendor involvement and role-play sales scenarios, such as a complete scooter, lift chair or stair lift sales presentation. Put magnetic signs on your delivery trucks announcing the grand opening date and your address.
• Use your first month in business to make personal calls on referral sources and the professional community, and direct mail your grand opening announcement to this audience. Personally invite them to your scheduled events, or host an opening breakfast. Hold another “get to know us” coffee for all shopping center or nearby businesses’ employees. They are a great source for word-of-mouth and can tell their friends and relatives what home health care equipment and supplies are!
• Use the grand opening event as your kickoff point. If you are in a leased space or building, check with your landlord about putting up grand opening signs, balloons or flags and using the parking lot for special displays.
• Set a grand opening “week” with several days of activities, but promote for a longer period. This will give you time to schedule the town mayor’s “new business” ribbon-cutting ceremony, invite other interested participants and schedule vendor demonstrations. Send a press release about the event to local media, and offer a personal “tour” of your facility to explain what it’s all about. Be sure to include a photo of your facility, your contact information and business card to allow for any follow-up.
• Plan on advertising the festivities in the local paper and radio, and place posters in assisted living facilities and support group and community meeting centers. Distribute your company’s newsletter in senior centers, retirement communities, sports centers, golf clubs, churches, tennis clubs, parent and caregiver support groups and other related support organizations. Check to see whether your newsletter could be distributed through your local Meals on Wheels program or handicapped transit. And look at advertising your new store within these venues or with these organizations.
• Don’t limit your grand opening; continue advertising and promotion for as long as you think it will bring you a payback. One idea is to highlight a different product/service area each month with a grand opening promotion and demonstrations. This assures that each major audience segment you want to attract will be specifically contacted with a targeted promotion.
• If you have a database of contacts, be sure to direct mail a grand opening flyer. Find out what demographic mailing lists are available within your desired market area, and target the specific audience segments you want to attract. Participate in the “Welcome Wagon” program that specifically targets new home owners. Their brightly colored flyer is a standout in any mailing.
• Work with vendors on cooperative advertising funds, free literature, newsletter content, sales rep and promotion support, in-store planograms, Web links and plug-ins and more.

Colette Weil, MBA, is managing director of Mill Valley, Calif.-based Summit Marketing, a firm specializing in strategic marketing, branding and program development for manufacturers, wholesale distributors and retailers. She may be reached at [email protected] or 415/388-5303.