Back to School Marketing: What can we learn from this season?

Will you be marketing heavily during the “back to school” season, which is already underway? I can’t believe the stores have already been stocked with notebooks and backpacks, and soon the malls will have the Fall clothing lines in. Kind of like Christmas trees appearing the second after the last bag of Halloween candy has been sold. Why do stores do this? And what can we, as business owners, learn from this season?

• Capitalize on the early adopters / early bird shoppers: Hey, there are some people who prefer to buy their notebooks for 10 cents and get the first pick of the designs.
• Stocking merchandise early reminds shoppers that you have what they need when they’re ready to buy so they won’t go to the store down the road.
• Push seasonal items to get them in the store so they’ll buy all of your other gear (at full price). Along the same lines, if you have products or services that are ideal for certain times of the year, do a seasonal push and promote those, even if they’re not your “bread and butter,” so to speak. It gets people excited about buying and thus gets consumers in a spending mood, where they’ll spend more in order to stock up or prepare for the upcoming (school year, holiday, etc.).