Hurry, hurry, step right up!

It is time to play the game called “G & A Budgeting.” This is the game where heads are counted; budgets are sandbagged and perks are justified. It is an annual ritual that becomes a core tenet in the over all business planning cycle. Yet, whether you are the head of a large department or a sole proprietor, managing your G & A expenses is considered by most, a necessary evil.

First of all, what is this thing called “G & A” anyway? Roughly speaking, these are budgeted dollars outside of the direct expense associated with the creation of products or services. For example, unlike labor dollars to run a store—direct labor—G & A labor dollars are associated with the office personnel. While the operations group is held to a tight P & L at the store level, often the out-of-store G & A budgets are not held to the same scrutiny. In some cases, the profits that are garnered at the store can become eroded at the overall company level with mismanagement of these G & A budgets.

So, it is time to take a close look at G & A as one way of managing to your desired bottom-line. While I am sure that in the last five years, these budgets have tightened considerably due to the economic downtown, they are still prone to having “fluff” in their line item budgets. In order to truly minimize fluff in the budget, one has to take a look at the top seven areas of a G & A budget and ask the following questions.

Out-of-Store Labor:

    •  When was the last time the organized “right-sized” its support staff to add value to the field operations?

    • Is there an opportunity to capitalize some of the labor associated with the company investments?

  •   Have the bonuses and performance merits been in sync with the overall operational profitability?

 Benefits and Insurance:

  •   How frequently are the plan costs of 401Ks, workman’s compensation and insurance reviewed in order to squeeze costs out of the system?

  •   Are the dollars invested for personnel welfare, tuition reimbursement and employee education getting a bang-for-the-buck?

  •   Is there “wiggle room” to reduce or combine offsite management meetings by 10%?  20%?

Travel and Entertainment:

    • Does the company have a strict travel and entertainment policy that company personnel are held to?

    • What types of savings benefits can you gain by negotiating a standard rate at the same hotel chain or rental car company?

    • If each out-of-store employee had to spend their own money on their travel, do you believe that they would schedule their trips smarter?

Office Occupancy

   •  If a goal is to reduce paper costs in the office, how close do you believe the company could get to “paperless” and what savings would be gained?

  •   How closely have you monitored utility costs and contracts including electric, gas, trash, telephone, data and the like to squeeze savings?

 •   Is the current office “right-sized” for the operation at hand or can the company do with less space?

Professional Fees:

•    What is the cost/benefit analysis to outsourcing professional services versus bringing some of those services in house?

  •  What special projects can be commissioned that realize savings on a percentage fee basis?

 • What internal preparation can be completed in advance of calling in a bookkeeper, accountant or attorney in order to offset their fees?

Computer/IT Related Expenses:

• What is the company philosophy on technology – functionality or chase the next shiny object?

• Are the technology advances at the company able to offset headcount increases?

•  How does the technology strategy at the organization derive savings from the interface with the field operations?

Other Expenses:

 •   Have the bank charges been shopped around in order to negotiate the best fee structure?

•  What parameters have been set with regard to memberships, subscriptions and donations?

•   What other expense line items can be looked at and renegotiated to limit additional expense?

I have always been a tremendous believer of bottom-up expense budgeting— meaning that each and every year, the budget is not a carryover, but rather a complete rewrite asking these types of questions.  Over time and unlike the government, which operates in the form of baseline budgeting with automatic increases, your G & A budgets will be tight. Employ this discipline in your organization and improve your P & L without a lot of angst.

John Matthews is the founder and president of Gray Cat Enterprises Inc., a strategic planning and marketing services firm that specializes in helping businesses grow in the restaurant, convenience and general retail industries.  With more than 20 years of senior-level experience in retail and a speaker at retail-group events throughout the U.S., Matthews has recently written two step-by-step manuals, Local Store Marketing Manual for Retailers and Grand Opening Manual for Retailers, which are available at www.graycatenterprises.com.

Budgets are tight, but you need to move top line sales—fast! What is a quick and easy way to expand your customer base? Partnering with noncompeting retailers to help your broaden exposure is a simple, yet terrific local store marketing idea.

By crafting a retail bounceback program, both parties win by improving sales and/or combining advertising dollars. Provided that you are expanding each other’s reach, this is a no-brainer for a multi-unit chain operator as well as the single-store operator. Many retailers are specialists in their product offerings and always benefit from strong relationships with nearby non-competing retail outlets.

The concept is straightforward: you partner with a noncompeting retailer and they hand out your marketing materials to their customers. These marketing flyers are called “bouncebacks”—they usually contain a coupon that “bounces” the customer back to your store. Then, you do the same for the noncompeting retailer, handing out bouncebacks for their stores.  For the cost of the flyers, this is a remarkably easy way to generate customer traffic—customers that are already in the vicinity of your location.  You can even share the cost of printing a joint bounceback with your noncompeting partner, helping reduce your cost even more, as well as solidifying your partner relationship in the eyes of your customers.

Choose Wisely: Picking the correct retail partner is essential in order to hit your desired objectives. An ideal partner would have a loose tie to your industry that will be complementary to your concept. Though you may share crossover customers, the linkage between concepts allows customers to act while in the same “mindset.”

Tap The Potential: Creating a cross-promotion bounceback with a non-competing retailer is an excellent way to tap into another retailer’s customer base.  Within your three-mile trade area, identify one noncompeting retailer to cross-promote with for each quarter.  Create independently or collaborate on a dual bounceback that will be distributed to each store’s customer base for a set period of time. Rotating your retail partners throughout the year will keep your offer fresh.

Execute Flawlessly: As customers purchase your products, attach a bounceback for the other noncompeting retailer so that your customers will frequent that establishment.  Likewise, your noncompeting retail partner will do the same with their customers, sending their customers into your store. Of course, it is prudent to know your partner’s offer to answer any quick questions a customer may have.

Make It Compelling: Depending upon your weekly customer traffic, ideally partner with a noncompeting retailer that averages the same traffic count. Since the partner is within your three-mile trade area, expect to receive upwards of 2% customer traffic from the non-competing retailer’s customer base. Capitalize on the one-stop shop mentality that may expand to the shopping center as opposed to just your store.

Track Results: If you are using a coupon on your bounceback to drive customer traffic, code the coupons so that you can track the redemptions of the coupons. For every new customer who comes in with a coded coupon, ensure that you capture their customer contact data in order to actively market to them in the future.  Remember, each new customer may only represent the first time sales–your results could be significantly higher if you cultivate repeat customer visits.

All too often, marketers tend to overcomplicate their messaging to potential customers or overspend in reaching them. Sometimes the best marketing strategies are simply capturing customers when they are in walking distance to your store. Though this may seem like a nuts-and-bolts approach to marketing your store, keeping it effortless for your customer to react and head over to your store sometimes is the most profitable way of driving sales.

John Matthews is the founder and president of Gray Cat Enterprises, Inc., a strategic planning and marketing services firm that specializes in helping businesses grow in the restaurant, convenience and general retail industries.  With more than 20 years of senior-level experience in retail and a speaker at retail-group events throughout the U.S., Matthews has recently written two step-by-step manuals, Local Store Marketing Manual for Retailers and Grand Opening Manual for Retailers, which are available at www.graycatenterprises.com.

What is your branding game plan?

Not the branding media schedule—that is just part of it—but rather, your overarching strategic decision-making game plan on all of your branding initiatives?

Most advertising managers have a page or two media plan that an agency has produced that shows how their advertising dollars will be spent. The game plan I am referring to is the overall philosophy and management tool that keeps every aspect of their branding on track.

The game plan acts as a compendium of sorts—a concise, yet comprehensive strategy of how the brand is executed in the marketplace. It covers all touch points of the brand and the “rules” for its implementation. Rather than leave this to chance, your game plan crafts a branding decision-tree that allows the manager to ensure that every branding decision is accretive to the overall brand experience, not detracting.

The game plan is a document that should be created to assist in communicating the advertising and media plan. It serves as a guide for the internal teams at the organization including the company managers and franchisees as well as providing crystal-clear direction to the agency. The compendium provides further explanation of the overall process for how the advertising plan is created in addition to how it will be managed.  These strategic decisions should be reviewed on an annual basis to determine the entire branding program.

Key elements to include in your branding game plan:

Market Research & Demographics: Based on the market research conducted at your company, the targeted audience of your brand communications should be reached based on demographics, program selection and scheduling guidelines. Demographics should cut across the following attributes and all brand activities should be vetted against these targets:

Age Range

Male/Female Ratio

Total Annual Income

Employment Ratio

Marital Status

Ethnicity

Program selection refers to the review of a programs content to ensure that it’s consistent with the advertiser’s desired brand image and its demographics. Scheduling guidelines assist on steering the programming placement, frequency and delivery of media.

Flights, Weights And Spots: Next, determine the game plan for when and how to communicate your brand. Flighting refers to scheduling periods of activity and inactivity on a TV and/or radio schedule. A period of activity is called a flight and a period of inactivity is called a hiatus. Flighting is typically used to cover a long period of time, such as a year, within a limited advertising budget that does not allow advertising for 52 weeks. TV weight refers to the number of target rating points (TRP’s) scheduled in a flight. TRP’s are the standard unit of TV measure.  Quantitatively, a TRP is equal to one percent of the target universe. Radio is a better medium than TV for building frequency. However, the fragmented nature of the radio market and the consumers’ listening patterns limit the cumulative reach that radio can deliver as a medium. Unit length refers to the duration of a commercial spot/radio broadcast.

Dayparts: Based on the demographics of the targeted audience, the brand manager needs to determine the optimal dayparts of the messaging. Dayparts deliver different audience compositions (e.g. daytime delivers a high percentage of women). There is also a correlation between a spots audience delivery and its relative cost.  Primetime delivers a large, broad audience and is, therefore, the most expensive daypart.

Electronic Media: Now, you need to execute the brand communication and there are numerous options from which to choose. Television delivers the highest reach of any medium. The sight, sound and motion of television allow the advertiser to communicate a message in a highly memorable way and to shape a visual into a recognizable image for their brands. Spot television offers the flexibility to target a specific local market aimed at the desired customer base in a programming environment consistent with the advertiser’s brand image. Spot air time for cable television is often much more expensive than broadcasting on a cost-per-thousand basis and does not have as large a reach. Cable television is limited because it only reaches paid subscribers. Spot radio is competitively purchased from local stations and can be easily targeted by market and demographics. Radio commercials are relatively inexpensive to produce which enables brands to change messages more frequently.  Since radio has no visual, it is less expensive than TV.

Non-Electronic Media: There are other ways besides electronic means to deliver your brand message. Outdoor advertising is commonly referred to as billboards. Outdoor advertising reaches a large percentage of the population, but because it is seen by people “on the go” billboard advertising is appropriate only for brief messages. It’s best used as a medium to reinforce an established, well-known brand. Newspapers reach a wide cross-section of the public, which makes them hard to target a specific audience. Other options include solo direct mail and marriage mail.

Sponsorships And Promotions: Your brand can be communicated through sponsorships and promotions as well. For instance, the brand may be aptly communicated through the sponsorship of local sports teams. By sponsoring these teams, the brand is allocated spot time during broadcasts, as well as occasional “mentions” of the brand by the game announcers. In addition, the brand may receive postings of  signage in the arena and mentions in printed promotional materials.  Lastly, aligning the brand with a corporate charity communicates that the brand is a upstanding corporate citizen.  These sponsorships and philanthropic involvement help communicate the brand community responsibility.

Social Media & Web: An overall brand game plan would not be complete without addressing social media. Setting up a company Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Twitter account and YouTube channel—each vertically integrated to your overall brand communications- enhances your brand presence. These social media enable the brand to be extremely nimble with its messaging and if integrated into an overall brand strategy, provide cost-effective touch points to key followers.

Your brand communications should work in tandem with one another regardless of the medium that is used to communicate. Each variable within these media—from program selection to day part mix— should be determined not haphazardly, but rather in a cohesive strategic branding compendium. Not only will the efficiency of your strategy be intact, but it will yield greater results.

John Matthews is the founder and president of Gray Cat Enterprises Inc., a strategic planning and marketing services firm that specializes in helping businesses grow in the restaurant, convenience and general retail industries.  With more than 20 years of senior-level experience in retail and a speaker at retail-group events throughout the U.S., Matthews has recently written two step-by-step manuals, Local Store Marketing Manual for Retailers and Grand Opening Manual for Retailers, which are available at www.graycatenterprises.com.

Westminster, Md.-based Jiffy Mart, a division of Tevis Oil has announced its new “Cups That Count” program in an ongoing effort to contribute to the welfare of the communities in which it does business.

Each Jiffy Mart location will feature a 20-ounce travel mug stamped with “The Cups That Count” logo, school logo and school colors. For each cup that is sold, $2 of that sale will be donated directly to that featured school. The first school partnering with Jiffy Mart in this new program is Westminster High School. Customers purchasing this cup will have the added benefit of receiving their first fill free and a discounted refill price when using the cup for future fountain soda purchases.

 “The name of this program is very fitting as the cups sold really do count,” said Dwayne Cover, business manager. “All proceeds from the cup sales go directly back to the local school to support our customer’s kids and their education right here in the county.”

“Purchasing a Cup That Counts will not only raise money for the schools but the reusable mug is also good for the environment,”said Tom Moser, general manager.

Jiffy Mart, a division of Tevis Oil, currently operates four stores in Carroll County, Md.

BP Products North America Inc. plans to support Team USA during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“With 23,000 employees in the U.S. BP is honored to be a part of the Team USA family, and we’re especially proud to share this partnership with our network of locally owned and operated BP-branded marketers,” said Amy Abraham, vice president of marketing for BP.

Abraham said BP wants to offer more activities and consumer promotions related to the Olympic games at its stations to make BP a “premiere destination” for access to Team USA experiences.

Throughout the London Games, BP will complement its retail site marketing efforts with a corporate advertising campaign to share BP’s commitment to fueling America and Team USA through supporting Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls. BP will be featured on telecasts and online video spots during the Games, which reaches as many as 215 million viewers.

Also, from May through September, BP plans to give away two promotions related to the London Games. During May 2 to June 2, BP intends to host a sweeptakes drawing to give away eight trips for two to the Games, including round-trip airfare and five-nights accommodation. From June 6 to Sept. 4, consumers can win merchandise and prizes related to Team USA.

BP markets about 15 billion gallons of gasoline each year to U.S. consumers through more than 11,000 BP and ARCO branded retail outlets.

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CITGO announced that Loyalink, its loyalty platform, has been approved as a new offering with its Loyalty Bucks program.

Loyalink allows retailers to create customized programs for their organizations and customer bases.

CITGO partnered with a small group of loyalty solution and service providers in February 2012 to initially launch its Loyalty Bucks program. As part of the program, CITGO contributes up to $2,000 per location toward the technology and service costs. Pinnacle’s Loyalink loyalty solution has been officially added to that program.

Pinnacle has provided CITGO branded retailers with a strong POS platform for nearly 15 years.

“We are pleased to be included as part of the new CITGO loyalty program,” said Drew Mize, chief operating officer at Pinnacle. “CITGO has developed a compelling program that will offset a significant majority of costs that a retailer would typically incur to implement a successful loyalty offering, and provides the service expertise to ensure ongoing success.”