As a new business with a marketing staff, developing a marketing strategy for your grand opening can be difficult. After you’ve determined your budget and organized your event, you’ll need to figure out how you’ll promote it. Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to promote your big opening in the sections below.
1. Bulletins or forums published by the city.
Community events are advertised in most cities’ bulletins or forums. Consider placing an ad in the local parks and recreation activity guide, for example. Alternatively, you can request that city officials publicize your event in their newsletters or other official correspondence with citizens.
It’s also a good idea to cultivate contacts with city leaders. You can utilize this as a marketing strategy if you can get a few city leaders to show there.
2. Your Connections.
Your personal network is the most obvious place to promote your grand opening. Invite your family, friends, and coworkers, and encourage them to do the same. You might even provide a discount to friends and relatives as an incentive.
Using a free email marketing program like HubSpot, you may send a mass email to your mailing list informing them of the opening. You can also use social media to reach out to your network.
Make a Facebook event (details below) and invite all of your friends and connections. This should assist you in publicizing your big opening.
3. Press in the area.
The local newspaper is an essential component of any grand opening marketing campaign. Make certain that the local press is invited to your event. You may even contact a local DJ or television caster to cover the occasion. It’s better if there’s a lot of coverage. Furthermore, if they attend your event, they will very certainly promote it on their own platforms and networks. You can appeal to your audience by utilizing their local celebrity.
You can send a press release before and after the event to make it easy for the news media to cover it.
Developing a relationship with the press is also an excellent long-term strategy. If your business is mentioned in the local media, more people will be aware of it and will be able to visit following the grand opening.
4. Old-fashioned advertising
Traditional advertising is still important for local businesses to have a successful marketing plan. You should distribute brochures as much as possible and use an old-fashioned “Grand Opening” sign. After all, it was through social media that my husband and I learned about a new restaurant in our area.
Additionally, local radio and billboard advertisements are effective ways to reach your target audience. Because the general public is unaware of your existence, it is critical that people become aware of your brand.
Direct mailings are another old strategy. Postcards addressed to a specific zip code are an excellent approach to reach a local audience.
5. Use of social media.
Most citizens are unlikely to see your billboard ad, read your flier, or listen to your radio ad. To address this, you should also use the internet to reach out to local audiences. To begin, use social media. Make a Facebook event and invite all of your friends. When that, you can run social media advertising and target a local area after you’ve created your social media accounts.
People should become aware of your brand online if they don’t notice your sign. Furthermore, the more individuals who notice your advertisement, the more people will show up.
You can also develop a custom hashtag for citizens to use throughout the event. This will aid in the creation of buzz and increased brand awareness among your target demographic.
6. Local businesses.
Another innovative marketing strategy is to partner with other local businesses. Coffee shops, for example, frequently include a bulletin board dedicated to community events. This area can be used to display a flyer for your grand opening.
In addition, many local businesses, such as hotels, have brochures available at the front desk or reception. You might ask whether you can put a leaflet in their window and tell their guests about your event.
Schools are another local location that may have advertising chances. Local advertisements are common in yearbooks and on sports fields. It’s critical to use your grand opening to form connections with other local businesses.
When Should You Promote a Grand Opening?
Let’s take a step back before we examine how fast you should publicize your grand opening. Your company should have a soft launch, or soft opening, before the grand opening to iron out any issues. Because there are certain to be some flaws, a soft launch allows you to work them out without exposing your product to a large audience.
This implies you could be open for a week or two before your actual grand opening. Your soft launch, on the other hand, might not be open to the general public. You might simply invite a few friends over for a trial run. In this situation, at your grand opening ceremony, you’d truly open your doors to the public for the first time. In any case, you should begin advertising two to three weeks before to the great opening event.
This implies you’ll most likely make and install the creative pieces two to three months before the big opening.
You’ll need to have your ads written, visuals created, and local press contacted and lined up before you start advertising.
A grand opening event is vital for more than just brand exposure. It’s also an excellent approach to begin expanding your audience and consumer base. You can collect emails throughout your event so that when the day is done, you can give your audience marketing updates, discounts, and social networking links.
