Attracting Customers With Grand Opening Strategies

Marketing approaches for grand opening day

Promotion and communication about the grand opening event

Once you've finalized the detailed marketing plan for your grand opening, you'll initiate the event's announcement through an extensive communication campaign. Utilize mediums such as distributing flyers at your restaurant or café to inform customers. Simultaneously, you need to establish a specific advertising schedule as follows:

• Create PR content, press releases about your store's grand opening event. Highlight compelling features of the promotional program to stimulate customer interest and encourage immediate participation.
• Precisely select categories and appropriate communication channels for your target customer audience. For instance, if your store caters to a sophisticated, higher-income demographic aged 25-40, choose communication channels aligned with these characteristics.
• Publish introductory posts on renowned forums; for instance, if it's a restaurant opening, consider platforms like Foody, What to Eat Today, and Saigon Foodie to attract attention and effectively draw customers to your establishment.
• Build a communication campaign across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Invest time and resources over 1-2 months to enhance engagement and reach potential customers. Run advertisements to ensure your store's message reaches as many potential customers as possible.
• As the opening day approaches, post status updates and event announcements on social media, complemented by running ads to widely disseminate your message online.
• Send formal invitations to all familiar customers, creating a lasting and dignified impression for the event.
• Utilize outdoor advertising methods such as banners, flyer distribution, hanging grand opening banners, and placing posters at the storefront and nearby areas to grab attention and pique customer interest.

Ways to attract customers to your store

Utilizing influential key opinion leaders (KOLs)

KOLs, an industry term, refer to individuals with significant influence within communities, such as singers, actors, models, bloggers, streamers, YouTubers, and more. Depending on the brand direction, image, and target customer base, businesses decide to collaborate with suitable KOLs.

An effective store opening idea is to invite celebrities to participate, helping the business attract a large customer base, especially loyal fans of the celebrities. Furthermore, it captures the attention of the public, particularly those interested in the lives of famous individuals.

If the financial resources are substantial, businesses can consider inviting celebrities to become official brand ambassadors and announce this information during the opening event, enhancing brand recognition and attracting customer interest.

Ways to attract attention during store opening

Nowadays, getting attention for a store opening is not overly difficult. There are many ways to create attraction for the store launch event. Here are some techniques that many businesses have successfully applied:

Organize mini-games/lucky spin

To generate excitement and interest during a store opening, incorporating engaging games is essential. You can organize lucky mini-games, where customers take on challenges and receive prizes, or set conditions for purchases over $100 to qualify for a lucky spin.

By utilizing games related to products and the brand, you not only draw a crowd but also have the opportunity to promote products and showcase the brand's uniqueness and creativity.

Furthermore, when hosting prize-winning games on the store's opening day, it's advisable to hire a flexible, cheerful, and witty MC to create a lively atmosphere and encourage enthusiastic customer participation.

Promotions and deals

This attention-grabbing technique is no stranger to many. However, its effectiveness remains strong, as it taps into the customer's mentality of seeking good deals.

Some popular promotion and deal programs for store opening events include:

• Sample product trials

Distributing sample products for customers to experience is a highly effective promotional strategy, especially for brands in the food, cosmetics, and fragrance industries.

• Service vouchers or shopping coupons

For businesses offering services like spas, beauty treatments, etc., giving away service vouchers or shopping coupons is an effective way to attract customers and gather valuable data on the opening day.

• Buy one, get one free (BOGO) deals

The buy one, get one free promotion is a common approach. When customers purchase one product, they receive an additional item as a gift, adding value and reinforcing brand recognition.

• Direct discounts or quantity-based discounts

Offering direct discounts on high-value products such as electronics, technology, real estate, beauty services at a spa, etc., during the store opening will capture the attention of avid shoppers.

• Free movie or concert tickets and lucky draws

Promotions involving free movie, concert, theater tickets, or lucky draws are widely applied by brands to attract a large customer base during store openings. The aim is to create allure and draw a crowd to the opening event.

Therefore, the gifts in such cases typically possess characteristics such as high value, universal appeal to all ages and interests (such as tickets to IDECAF theater, concerts, the chance to win a motorbike, refrigerator, cash, etc.).

Furthermore, during the process of organizing a store opening event, selecting a talented and interactive host is crucial. The opening event's MC should effectively showcase the value of the gifts, seamlessly integrate with the brand, and generate excitement for the program.

Standing out through event backdrops for store opening

This is also considered a strategy to create focal points in branding and promoting a business's products. The backdrop should be creatively designed, reflecting the company's identity elements such as logo, company name, slogan, motto, and operational philosophy. When designing the opening event backdrop, attention should also be paid to material selection, such as PP, fabric, tarpaulin, acrylic, or even handmade materials, to generate special attention from customers.

Using backdrops to attract customers

Special edition products

This approach has been widely adopted in opening events, particularly for products like fragrances, electronics, and cosmetics.

Specifically, on the store's opening day, there will be products from the store's catalog along with a special edition product - available in limited quantities - sold exclusively on the opening day.

For instance, it could be 100 bottles of a luxury perfume edition with a limited quantity on the opening day, or only 50 uniquely designed red smartphones...

With the desire to become among the first to own a "special edition" product, customers will be drawn to attend the company's opening ceremony with excitement and special interest.

However, when implementing this store opening idea, the brand needs to determine the quantity of "special edition" products to ensure reasonableness, and the product should be appealing and unique enough to capture customer attention.

Grand and stunning store decoration

To create a distinct impression on the opening day, you need to focus on decorating the store, restaurant, or eatery to establish an attractive and standout ambiance. Choose colors like red, gold, and blue to symbolize luck and prosperity for the store. Additionally, don't forget to prepare decorative accessories such as banners and standees hanging from the entrance to welcome customers and add an extra atmosphere of excitement and joy to the event.

Using opening event mascots

Mascots are symbolic characters, which can be animals or other figures created by humans, representing the message the brand wants to convey to customers. For example, Baemin's mascot is a chubby cat, and the mascot for the 2003 SEA Games in Vietnam was a golden buffalo.

Mascots are used for brand identification, so the idea of using mascots (individuals dressed as mascots) to perform dances and attract customers has been favored and applied by many businesses. Mascot characters are often designed to be cute, similar to giant teddy bears, which attract many customers to participate, take photos, and interact on the opening day.

With the idea of using mascot dance performances to attract customers during the opening event, you need to find someone who can dance, be humorous, and create an energetic atmosphere, adding more fun to everyone around, especially children.

Showcasing business identity through tea breaks or parties

An appealing and sophisticated menu is a perfect advantage for a business in the eyes of customers. Many businesses have applied this strategy and achieved unexpected success. Spread the message to customers that when they attend the store opening event, they will enjoy a lavish complimentary tea break. This will undoubtedly generate excitement and attract a large number of attendees.

Lion dance/entertainment performances

A popular idea to attract customers and make the store opening event stand out is to organize a Lion Dance and impressive entertainment performances.

A Lion Dance performance accompanied by resounding drums, along with remarkable artistic and dance acts, will capture the interest of the participants. However, when organizing this type of activity, careful consideration must be given to setting up a suitable stage and area to ensure the comfort of attending customers, avoiding overcrowding or disorderly situations.

What to do for a store opening?

Innovative first-time activities

This is a fresh and unique store opening strategy. These activities could be "the first time releasing 100 lanterns into the sky during the company's opening ceremony,...". While there are many significant activities that a company or store can carry out on the opening day, careful consideration should be given to potential risks and anticipated problem-solving. Moreover, it's essential to choose events related to your brand and products to enhance brand awareness.

Setting up display counters/booths

Currently, one of the most attractive store opening approaches is investing in building unique booths, creating a space resembling a fair. This store opening idea sparks curiosity among customers and encourages them to attend and explore the intriguing elements within.

The booths at the opening event can offer complementary or related products (consider avoiding direct competition with rivals), as well as game booths (ring toss, darts) and food booths (beverages, pastries, fruits,...).

For instance, if the store is opening to showcase electronic products, participating booths could provide electronic accessories, decorative electronic items, and other related products under the same brand.

These are 10+ unique and impressive ways to attract customers to your store on the opening day that Thien An Media wants to share with you. Hopefully, through this article, you have gained additional ideas to make your store opening event memorable. Wishing your business and store great success and remarkable achievements.