You’ve heard me say that you must spend 20% of your work time on marketing. If you aren’t, then it doesn’t matter what you do for the other 80% of the time. 

Why? Because your people won’t be there otherwise!  You won’t have traffic.  If you work 5 days a week, that’s the equivalent of one full day spent specifically on marketing your business. It’s that important. 

But what is the real reason that we are putting so much time and energy on marketing? You might answer “more sales” or “bigger reach”, and you wouldn’t be wrong – but these are actually by products of effective marketing.
The true purpose of marketing is to create focus and urgency. 

It’s noisy out there. Just talking louder is not going to work. Being generic is not going to work. Your marketing tactics need to be targeted to your specific audience, they need to create focus and they need to inspire urgency.

A Facebook live video is the perfect example! Your audience are your raving fans so you’re speaking to your ideal target audience. You have their attention and you create focus on the exact items you want to sell. You inspire urgency because they have to be the first to comment/order or the items will sell out.

Another marketing tactic that accomplishes focus and urgency is a clearance sale.
Yes, your clearance sale is not just an event – it is a marketing tactic and one you need to include in your marketing plan every season. It’s targeted to a specific audience (Pinkies), it creates focus (on the specific merchandise you want to move out) and inspires urgency (it’s only on for a limited time)!

Of course there are concerns about doing some of our marketing tactics the way we’ve always done them – the clearance sale is the perfect example – while in the middle of a pandemic. We have to tweak, adapt and change so that our efforts are as effective as before. 

I addressed these concerns in my MasterClass How to Have a Clearance Sale during COVID Safely & Successfully the other day. I covered some great tools for adapting your clearance sale to bring your desired results: Moving merchandise out and putting cash in your pocket – even during a pandemic!

If you missed it, the replay will be available for a short time!  Grab some popcorn and a glass of your favorite beverage Click here to watch it now!

Happy Retailing!

P.S. The tips from the MasterClass have to be used with the steps from our Killer Clearance Sale Secrets program in order to create focus and urgency with your clearance sale. Click here to learn how our private clients are doing just that and increasing their sales right now!