Boost Traffic While Helping Others.
One of the best ways to get new customers to know about your business is to partner with a local charitable organization and host a fundraising event! People love to support local causes they believe in, and by hosting an event at your business that benefits a good cause, you can reach a lot of new people that have never heard about you before…AND help those less fortunate.
Here are several ideas:
Fashion Show Fundraiser This is a really fun one…it takes a lot of ground work, but is the single best way to increase your business if you have a boutique selling clothing, jewelry, and/or shoes. When our Bad Axe store opened, we noticed that we didn’t have many 12-25 year olds shopping even though we had the cool jeans, dance dresses and trendy styles they loved in our other store. Having a model search and mannequin modeling live event the Friday night of Memorial Day literally boosted our junior department sales by 38% that summer and 46% that fall. All models got a 20% discount on what they modeled, and a portion of that weekends junior sales went back to the schools. Another idea is to host it at a local restaurant and package it as a meal with a fashion show, have the charity and participating stores presell tickets, and donate back to the school.
Dine Out for the Dogs This is another fun one that my Women’s Life Group did to great success and we raised thousands of dollars for our dog pound in a one night event. We booked the whole restaurant dinner hours for a weeknight in February and had two options for meals….perch dinner or steak dinner. Pre-sold the tickets online and in person, and the ticket price included an extra amount for the donation, and we also had a 50/50 raffle. For a restaurant that wants to donate a portion of the evening to a local cause, you can do the same thing but have the charitable group sell the tickets, send in the press releases to the media and promote on their own social media for you. This way their core following sees it. They can do their own 50/50…and you will have a full restaurant on an otherwise slow weeknight off season. Afterward, you present a check to the organization and get even more free publicity!
Girl Scout Cookie Formula Fundraiser Just about any product that is widely popular can be sold the same way little kids sell cookies. Think of it…the same order form, 5 different items you sell, and other people are out selling your products in an order fulfillment way. People love supporting local businesses even more than chains, and its a great way to reach a bunch of new customers!
Whatever your business sells, there is very likely one or more good causes in your community that your customer base would love to support. The key to making this be profitable long term is to match the cause to something your existing clientele would like, because the new people will also be similar in psychographics and demographics…and are likely to be long term customers.
FREE CONSULTATIONWondering what might work for your business? Lets chat! As someone who has a lot of experience with both fundraising and business marketing, I love to organize these for local businesses and help others.
