With Sugar Berry being a new business and the only one of it's kind in the East Lansing area, the promotional opportunities are endless. We have a blank slate and small budget to hit our target market with our objectives of awareness and loyalty. As we brainstormed the countless strategies to advertise the Sugar Berry name, we had to stick with those that were at low or no cost, and that would be easy for a busy new business owner to implement.
The most important first step we suggest is creating an online presence, specifically with a website, findable on search engines and online tools such as Yelp and Urban Spoon. Consumers do not use phone books anymore to find businesses. If it is not online and locatable within 2 minutes, it will be forgotten. The Facebook page that Ann has set up is a great start, however a large part of the target market (local adults and families) do not have or know how to use Facebook. A website is an absolute necessity to keep up with today's society. It would include the flavors that are currently being offered, pricing, pictures of the store, location and hours. Sugar Berry's ambiance is so appealing, that if customers could know about it before they physically visit the store, it might be even more incentive to visit. The website could also feature specials and coupons to add an extra motive to visit. Currently when you type in "Sugar Berry East Lansing" into Google, the location pops up along with one Yelp review. It is not clear what exactly the store offers or even their hours. Furthermore, when you type in "Frozen Yogurt East Lansing," assuming that a consumer wouldn't have awareness of Sugar Berry, nothing pops up to advertise the store. We need to penetrate the Internet market and get out there into the cyper world.
Next, we want to create awareness by creating a coupon that gets put in multiple print ads such as the MSU coupon book, the Lansing State Journal and flyers passed to public schools around the area. The coupon doesn't need to be a significant bargain, just something that gives customers a little more incentive to visit the store and creates awareness. Since the MSU coupon book is free to all students, most people are more than willing to look through them and use them.
Even though the location is one of Sugar Berry's downfalls, we think that we could also leverage the high traffic in a positive way and end up benefiting. The parlor is located next to a hotel, across the street from a very high traffic gas station and shopping plaza, and in close proximity to a bowling alley and highway. Sugar Berry could partner up with several of these businesses and do promotional offers that benefit both companies. For example, we could partner with AT&T right next door, and offer a discounted frozen yogurt for buying a new phone. We also think the currently vacant drive through window is a great opportunity to create more drive-by traffic. Even though you would miss out on part of the experience of visiting Sugar Berry, drive through guests could have several on-the-go frozen yogurt and topping flavors. In addition, being a frozen yogurt parlor, Sugar Berry naturally attracts the most guests in the warm weather months. We could make the experience more enjoyable by creating outdoor seating in the front of the store to take advantage of warm weather.
Lastly, to meet our objective of creating store loyalty, we need to offer some kind of incentive to keep customers coming back. Providing consistent and supreme customer service is a great start (which they already do), but we thought that creating a customer loyalty card would be the next step. The loyalty card would have Sugar Berry's name and website address on it, and offer a deal like "buy 10 frozen yogurt sundaes, get your 11th free." People will see the loyalty card in their wallet which will remind them to visit Sugar Berry when they're craving a treat. In addition, it will motivate customers to visit Sugar Berry over an ice cream competitor.
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