Your Next Marketing Campaign Might Already Be Sitting in Your Inventory

Think about how much time a firearms retailer can spend trying to figure out what to promote. Hunting season is coming, a holiday is approaching, or sales have slowed down a little, and somebody decides it's time to put together a campaign. Now the questions start. What should we promote? What should the email say? What should we put on Facebook? Do we need to create a special offer? Should we have somebody design a new graphic?

Meanwhile, the retailer has a store full of products, a purchasing history, knowledge of what customers have been asking about, and employees who spend their days helping people figure out what they need.

There's a good chance the foundation for the next marketing campaign is already sitting somewhere in that business. The opportunity is learning to look at those products a little differently.

Let's use hunting season as an example, since it's something firearms retailers understand and prepare for every year.

A customer getting ready for deer season may need ammunition, optics, a rangefinder, or any number of other things depending on what he already owns and where he plans to hunt. He may have a rifle he's been using for years and simply needs to get everything ready for opening day. Another customer may be putting together his first hunting setup and needs considerably more help.

You already understand these differences because you have these conversations with customers throughout the year. The opportunity is to use that knowledge to determine which products belong together in a promotion.

Walk through your store and ask yourself a simple question: If I were helping somebody get ready for opening day, which products would I want to show him?

You might identify a scope, a rangefinder, several ammunition options, and a few accessories. You might also remember a product you've been considering bringing into inventory because customers have asked about it. Suddenly, you have the beginnings of a hunting-season campaign, and you haven't had to invent an elaborate marketing concept.

This approach also works for businesses whose customers have very different interests. A retailer who serves waterfowl hunters will likely identify a different group of products than one whose customers primarily hunt deer. Even two stores in the same state may have different opportunities based on the people walking through their doors. That knowledge is something you already have, and it should play a much bigger role in your marketing decisions.

Once you've identified the opportunity, the next step is to create a group of products that makes sense together. For a hunting-season campaign, I might start with a small selection of products that help somebody prepare for the season. I'm looking for items that belong in the same conversation. A rangefinder and a scope could fit that conversation, along with ammunition appropriate for the customer's firearm and other useful accessories.

The key is that I should be able to explain why every product belongs in the promotion. I wouldn't automatically include something simply because I have too much of it sitting on the shelf. If I can find a legitimate connection between that product and what the customer is trying to accomplish, great. If it doesn't belong, forcing it into the campaign probably isn't going to make the promotion more useful.

There's also no reason to include every hunting-related product in the building. A focused group gives the retailer something manageable to work with and gives the customer a more understandable shopping experience.

Think about the difference between receiving an email with a random assortment of products and seeing a promotion built around getting ready for opening day. With the second approach, the customer understands why those products were selected. He can look through the group and consider whether anything is missing from his own preparations. That is the opportunity: use your knowledge of the customer to give the products context.

Once you've created that group, you've accomplished something that can be used well beyond a single email or advertisement.

Here's where I think this gets interesting, especially for smaller retailers who don't have somebody dedicated to marketing.

You've already done the work of identifying the products you want to promote. You know why they belong together, and you have a clear idea of the customer you're trying to reach. Why would you want to start over every time you need to create another piece of marketing? The same product selection can become the foundation for a dedicated hunting-season page on your website. That page can display the featured products and give customers a place to explore what you're promoting.

Now you've got somewhere useful to send people when you create an email. Instead of trying to squeeze every product into the email itself, you can introduce the hunting-season promotion and direct customers to the page where everything is available.

That same page gives you somewhere to send people from social media. It also gives your employees a useful destination to share when they're answering customer questions or helping somebody who wants to look through the products later.

And don't forget the people who are already walking through your store. A simple sign at the counter or near a relevant product display can introduce the promotion to somebody who might not have seen your email or social media posts. A QR code can give that customer an easy way to pull up the products on his phone.

Look at what you've accomplished with one group of products. You now have something to feature on your website, something to talk about in an email, something to share on social media, and something you can promote inside your physical store.

You haven't had to come up with four different marketing ideas. You've taken one useful idea and made it available wherever your customers might encounter your business.

There's another habit worth reconsidering when you're building a campaign around inventory. Retailers sometimes assume that creating a promotion means putting everything involved on sale.

You can certainly offer discounts, and there are plenty of occasions when that makes sense. But don't overlook the value of simply bringing relevant products together and giving customers a reason to consider them.

Maybe you're introducing a new rangefinder and want to give customers a reason to look at it. You could feature it alongside other products that help somebody prepare for hunting season. If there's room for a special offer on that particular item, you might decide to discount it while leaving the other products at their regular prices. That gives you a promotion without requiring you to reduce the price of everything you've selected.

You could also build a campaign around availability, product education, seasonal preparation, or an upcoming event. The important part is understanding what you're trying to accomplish before deciding whether a discount belongs in the campaign.

For a firearms retailer, that's an important distinction because different products have different costs, margins, and purchasing considerations. Your inventory and your understanding of your customers should help determine the offer rather than simply applying the same discount to everything. A campaign needs a purpose. A price reduction is only one of the tools you can use to accomplish it.

Let's say you've put together your hunting-season product selection, created the website page, and started promoting it. A week later, you receive another product that would fit perfectly with what you're already doing. Wouldn't it make sense to add that product to the existing promotion rather than start from scratch? The same thinking applies when you sell through an item, receive something new, or decide that a particular product no longer belongs in the campaign.

This is where treating your promotion as an ongoing group of products can be especially useful. You're creating something you can maintain as your inventory changes and as you learn more about what customers are interested in.

For example, you could start preparing a seasonal promotion before every product you intend to feature has arrived. You already know the general focus, so you can begin identifying products, preparing the content, and deciding how you want to present everything. As additional inventory becomes available, you can incorporate the relevant items.

Of course, you still need to pay attention to availability, pricing, and whether everything being advertised is accurate. The point is to have an organized way to keep the campaign current without rebuilding all the supporting marketing every time something changes.

And once hunting season is behind you, the same approach can be used again. Think about holiday promotions, a new product introduction, an upcoming class, or even a recurring selection of products you want customers to pay attention to. Each one can begin with a specific customer need and a carefully selected group of products.

Over time, you may find yourself looking at incoming inventory and asking how it could fit into an existing promotion or create an opportunity for a future one. That's a useful habit for anybody responsible for purchasing, merchandising, or marketing in a retail business.

If I were going to put this into practice today, I'd begin by walking through the store with a specific customer in mind. Since hunting season is approaching, I'd think about somebody preparing for opening day. I'd look at the products we already have, consider what customers have been asking about, and identify a handful of items that belong together. Then I'd write down why I selected them. That explanation will help determine what the campaign says.

If the products are intended to help customers prepare for deer season, the email should communicate that. The website page should make those products easy to find, and the social media content should give people a reason to take a look.

I would also think about the questions customers are likely to have. Perhaps they're asking what they should check before heading into the woods or what equipment they need to review before opening day. Those questions could become useful articles or videos that complement the promotion and help customers make better decisions.

You don't need a complicated marketing plan to begin this exercise. You can walk the store with a piece of paper, identify the products, and start working through what you want to accomplish.

You may even find that the person responsible for purchasing should be having a more regular conversation with whoever handles your marketing. The purchasing side already knows what is coming in, what is available, and what opportunities may be approaching. Marketing can use that information to prepare campaigns while there's still time to make something useful out of them.

That's an opportunity many businesses can explore without spending another dollar on advertising.

The next time you find yourself wondering what your store should promote, I'd encourage you to look at your inventory before you start looking for marketing ideas. Think about the people who buy those products, the reasons they buy them, and which products naturally belong together. You may discover that you already have everything you need to get started, including the knowledge required to explain why your customers should care.

At Coreware, we've been building capabilities that help retailers put this approach into practice without having to manage every part of the process separately. Retailers can create product collections, build promotions around selected products, display those collections on dedicated website pages, and use them as the foundation for campaigns across multiple marketing channels. As products are added to a collection, the connected page can reflect those changes without rebuilding the page itself. The platform also provides ways to track campaign activity so retailers can begin understanding how customers respond to what they're promoting. The tools are there to help you put your knowledge of your products and customers to work, and you can begin exploring those capabilities at coreware.com.