Looking for a new promotion idea to use at the local festival, sidewalk sale, or even in your store? Check out this “Grab Bag” idea featured by Bob Negen on the Whizbang! Training site. People like surprises, and they like a good deal, and this grab bags promo idea has the best of both worlds. Plus, people are likely to spend more when they enter the store to cash in the $1-$10 gift certificate they won!

Grab Bag Promotion

Sidewalk sales are coming up this month for many of you, and we thought this idea from Shari Aussant could easily be transplanted from her local fair to your sidewalk. It’s a fun, imaginative way to create excitement, increase sales, get rid of excess inventory, and boost the number of transactions per customer.

You know, a little bit of imagination can take you a long way. Re-imagining and re-inventing an idea to make it your own is what having your own business is all about.  It’s one of the reasons we really liked this Tip sent in by Shari last week…

Hi Bob,

Your Tip of the Week re: using gift certificates to increase traffic in the shop was fantastic! Our shop sponsored a table at a local fair, and we were fresh out of ideas for what to do to create excitement. The night before, I re-read your email and listened again to the podcast, and here is what we came up with.

We filled 500 grab bags with product that wasn’t moving. Candles that were not the best, free samples given to us by our companies, hot chocolate packets, teas, all little items that we had sitting around. For $1.00, customers could pick a grab bag, and in 50 of the bags, we hid plastic gift cards with random amounts ranging from $1 to $10 with one $50. We also filled a retro bubble gumball machine with fun prizes and free samples for 50 cents a chance to win a $25 gift card.

The bubble gum machine brought in $325, and the grab bags brought in over $500. We made our cost back on all the items given away and  covered the cost of the table, staff, and gift cards. We passed out hundreds of little $5 gift certificates, as well. The store, which had a history of being quiet on festival days, ended up having a banner day with all the new customers that were coming in with the gift cards and mystery gift certificates. The winners had to physically bring in the card for us to run it on the machine to see what dollar amount they won! It was so fun, and our table was the busiest one at the fair. People were jumping when they got a card in their bag, as well as with all the freebies they got.

Thanks so much for all of your great ideas; we are having such fun with your e-blasts!

– Shari Aussant, Old Company Store“

Please let me know how this type of grab bag promotion idea works out for you! Sounds like fun!