Convenience Marketing Group with Tim Lazor: Recent Episodes

Tim Lazor

America's Only Marketing Firm That Specializes In Growing The Convenience Industry’s Sales. We help: Convenience Store Retailers…Convenience Distributors…Convenience Manufacturers & Suppliers……Grow their sales and margins with differentiated, disruptive, and value–creating marketing programs.

View Details

YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNAm9Xn7U3A

In 1517 Martin Luther was so disgruntled with the Church that he wrote and nailed 95 proclamations of reform to the church door in Germany. He was eventually excommunicated by the Pope for heresy.

While I don't think the Pope will view my 25 Convenience Store Marketing Proclamations with such disdain, they might make some retailers a little squeamish.

Why?

Because "convenience" in the eyes and demands of customers is growing, but the retail convenience category is not keeping pace with this demand.

The 25 Proclamations are my way of addressing both the mistakes being made, and the new opportunities for growth that flow out of them.

If you're only looking for the next shiny magical product to save your bacon, these ideas are not for you.

***If you want to create more value for your customers and differentiate your store, products and services, we might be able to help challenge your thinking and make you more competitive and profitable than ever.

Here we go...***

  1. We will acknowledge the ONLY purpose of our marketing is to engage customers in new ways with our retail locations; to grow our sales, margins and profits.

  2. We will recognize that convenience stores, convenience, and saving time, are more relevant than ever.

  3. We will acknowledge that value creation and differentiated marketing is a key reason for the growth of industry leaders like Sheetz, and that we can do this too.

  4. We will work 24/7 to methodically listen and understand our changing CUSTOMERS and their changing convenience needs.

  5. We will make the time to MEANINGFUL DIFFERENTIATE our brand, stores, products, services and people, and the value we deliver over OUR COMPETITORS.

http://conveniencemarketing.net/

View Details

Learn the secrets and tactics to creating, positioning and marketing convenience store food programs that are different, unique, drive foot traffic and deliver high profits. These are the retail marketing tactics I developed for retailers like Sheetz, Uni Marts, and others.

You Tube link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKxvD0kYphI

http://conveniencemarketing.net/

View Details

**Content from my upcoming book:

The Perfect Storm
How I Reinvented Convenience Store Marketing At Sheetz
by Tim Lazor

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphbBVHw0C8&t=14s Principle 1. Decide On—Then Protect --Your ‘Proactive’ Marketing Mindset**

Only you can do this. You must decide to always have a proactive marketing-first mindset, then protect your decision from the forces of entropy. Constantly making decisions that move marketing initiative forward creates work, disruption, problems, risk—and success and rewards.

YOUR People will fight you, not follow up, slow walk. And wear your down. Resist these forces and insist your company is embracing a marketing mindset forever.

Principle 2. Uncover How You Create Value & Why You Are Different

Retail marketing succeeds when you’ve taken time to create real and new value for customers, and differentiated it in the marketplace to customers. The ultimate secret is this: You are the difference. You are the storm.

Principle 3. Create & Execute Your Marketing Plan From Value & Differentiation

Your marketing or promotional plan doesn’t have to be long…it has to be strategic, powerful and simple to execute under pressure and chaos. And it has to be written (even six pages) so it can be shared, communicated and committed to by your team. No exceptions.

Principle 4. Build A Marketing Team With Your Ideology, Not Paper

  1. Implementing Your Convenience Store Retail Marketing Plan is a team sport. Be precise in picking your team, and what each teammate will specifically do for the company. (Not themselves. Not their portfolio. Not their Linkedin page)

Principle 5. Love Your Money Machine (Oil The Gears)

Your store is a value-creating & money-making machine. Maintain it. Love it. Improve it. Most important, use your marketing machine to communicate and sell to customers moving through it. And clean your fucking bathrooms.

Principle 6. Measure Your Marketing Budget & Its Sales Results

Be precise and exact in what you decide to measure from your marketing program and budget: It eliminates opinions, delays and chaos, and delivers helpful data for future decisions.

Principle 7. Keep Innovating & Creating More Problem-Solving Value For Customers.

The closer you are (and stay close) to hearing your customers’ needs and opinions, the more innovative your company and its marketing will be in the future. You’ll be un-copyable, un-stoppable and extremely profitable.

http://conveniencemarketing.net/

View Details

In this episode, Convenience Marketing Group President Tim Lazor interviews Luke Maurer.

Luke is CEO of Digital Marketing firm Ad Giraffe AND owner of BJ Maurer Ford Dealership. He brings a 1-2 marketing punch and perspective to the C-Store Industry when he discusses:

  • The essential, but sometimes taken-for-granted role cars play in the convenience industry (How else do most customers get on the lot?)
  • EV vs Gas cars. Implications for C-stores.
  • The dramatic beginnings of the family business during the Great Depression.
  • How to use digital and social media to reach c-store customers in real time and engage with them.
  • The robust c-store capabilities Facebook brings to the marketplace.
  • Thinking about C-store Customer Lifetime Value.

Questions C-STORES Must Answer

  • How to get out of the “2 items for a low price” rut.
  • Where should you start digital marketing to reach more customers and get more foot traffic on lot and inside your store?
  • New thinking about How to promote the FOOD category within a convenience store. Where would we start?
  • DIGITAL DILEMA: How do we find potential convenient store customers through digital platforms?
  • From beginning to end, what does customer engagement look like step-by-step?
  • What are some common mistakes people make when trying to promote their business digitally and socially?
  • Is there a difference between digital marketing and social marketing?
  • What is “content creation” and “brand story?”
  • How do you budget for and measure your digital and social marketing initiatives? Are they measurable?
  • You are a single location? How can digital and social marketing apply here?
  • What are some resources our listeners should check out?
  • Pricing and cost considerations?

Tim Lazor, The Convenience Marketing Group

412-423-0044
412-400-3144
http://www.conveniencemarketing.net

View Details

SHOW NOTES:
How Your Retail Marketing Should Be Driving Sales…

Step #1

Uncover The New Value Your Company Creates.

You might be surprised

Not features and benefits, old school.

Situations.

Value feels like something specific

Around a problem define it.

Specific and innovative program of solutions that make problem go away

Step #2

Then, Creatively Differentiate That Value. HOW?

Look at you and competitors, sharks and cage match

Competitors are not passive or static

Take into account 4 Forces affecting you and competitors

Threat of new competitors esp non-traditional

Power of your customers

Power of your suppliers

Threat of substitues Electric for gas?

GO VERY DEEP?

Who do you want to challenge?

What do you BELIEVE. Your ideology?

Some other questions to consider:

What is my unique point of view toward customers and why we serve them?

Why do we do this?

Why does our company matter?

If we went out of business today, would people miss us?

How do we do what we do better?

What specifically do we do better?

Boil down to a statement: We are the only _________ that creates value to make ________ go away for ________________.

Marketing Magic happens focus and sacrifice

What you say vs. where and how.

Step #3

Tell Your Target.

Complete marketing and creative and media and digital plan

Implement

Engage

Step #4

Drive Sales.

Learn as you go, re apply

Marketing strategy is never static

Fun

Tim Lazor
www.conveniencemarketing.net
timlazor@comcast.net
412-423-0044

View Details

How To Create C-Store Point-Of-Sale Campaigns That Crush It & Grow Sales In 9 Steps.

The Three FOUNDATIONAL Questions

1. What do you believe about your convenience stores that make them unique and different from competitors? And what is your specific point of view about the convenience store industry and its customers today?

2. What is the new value you are creating for customers this month? What is the new value you are creating in your stores to get new customers onto your lot and into your stores buying more stuff?

**3. Before you create a new point-of-sale marketing campaign, what specific competitors do you want to challenge with it? Who will you take business from?

Point Of Sale How To's:
1. Create your point-of-sale campaign for a specific target audience
2. Demand a bigger idea or a “hook” in your point-of-sale campaign
3. Attach sales goals to your point-of-sale campaign
4. Create point-for-sale for the medium that carries the message
5. Point of sale campaigns must communicate first; be creative second.
6. Consider the "tone" of your point-of-sale campaign
7. Minimize words
8. Know what specific action you want the customer to take
9. Have Fun & Never Be Ignored!

Tim Lazor, President.
412-423-0044**

timlazor@comcast.net

WEB: www.conveniencemarketing.net

PODCAST: https://www.buzzsprout.com/189695

BLOG: http://blog.lazoryost.com/ YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/TIMLAZOR1/featured

View Details

17 Reasons You Don’t Use Marketing To Grow Your Convenience Store Sales & Customer Counts. (All Are Mistakes)
1. You don’t know how to begin.

2. You don’t understand modern retail marketing concepts and tactics.

3. You don’t want to.

4. You don’t think it’s needed.

5. You think it’s a waste of money.

6. You think it’s an expense.

7. You think it cannot be measured. ROI.

8. You have nothing to market.

9. Your stores are not different than your competitors.

10. Your stores are worse than your competitors.

11. You are waiting for the next Magical Product to be available to save you

12. You don’t think you are creative.

13. You don’t have anyone to help you do it.

14. You think your competitors’ marketing is way ahead of you, so you think ‘what’s the use?’

15. You’ve never held a basic marketing plan in your hands.

16. You believe cokes and smokes will still get customers in your store.

17. You think Amazon, AmazonGo, and Dollar stores selling gas are a passing fad.

Here’s the truth.

Some of the most successful retailers today started as one store many years ago.

What they initiated that you haven’t YET is they worked EVERY DAY to create new value for customers, differentiated that new value, and THEN communicated it to customers with marketing.

Then customers responded by trying out this new value. They came to the stores and bought stuff.

They loved it, and did I again and again.

Even in the convenience store space, the big players of today were ALL smaller players years ago.

The one theme you’ll see time and time again is the work they did to create new value, differentiate it, then market it.

It works every time it’s honestly tried.

And you can do it too. You simply have to start, today. And do it with the resources you have at hand and can afford.

As your marketing gains traction and sales success, you’ll gather more steam and resources and momentum.

That’s when it gets fun, you start to really compete (even against the big boys) and even start to kick a little convenience store ass.

When I wrote the marketing and promotional plans for Sheetz when I worked at an ad agency for them, (1993-2000) I created and implemented my own set of 25 marketing tactics that helped catapult their growth.

In my recently published Marketing Manifesto For Convenience Stores, I outline them for any convenience store retailer to use, whether you have 5 stores, or 155.

Email for a FREE copy. It’ll change your business life. I guarantee it.

And one final thought for those of you non-believers who think it’s still too late to begin your own marketing program:

Q: ”When is the best time to plant at tree?”

A: “20 years ago…and today”

Start now. Create new value now. Market now.

Plant your tree. Light your fuse.

Tim Lazor, President.
412-423-0044

timlazor@comcast.net

WEB: www.conveniencemarketing.net

PODCAST: https://www.buzzsprout.com/189695

BLOG: http://blog.lazoryost.com/

View Details

**10 Questions with Tim Lazor, President of The Convenience Marketing Group

Tim Lazor, along with host Joan Zaczyk, discuss the value of a creating a Podcast focussed on marketing in the convenience industry. They cover the need for Retailers, Distributors and Suppliers to differentiate their companies, products and services, and how this can grow sales and margins.

Tim answers these questions:

  1. Why are you creating a marketing podcast for the Convenience Industry? What's the value?

  2. What drives you nuts about the current state of marketing in the Convenience Industry?

  3. What value should convenience leaders expect from a marketing-focused podcast?

  4. What is the Convenience Store Marketing Manifesto? What does Redefining The Future Of Convenience Store Marketing, Communications & SALES SUCCESS involve?

  5. What is the thinking behind it? What is your vision of marketing in the Convenience Industry's future?

  6. Talk about your approach to creating meaningful marketing differentiation as it applies to the Convenience Industry?

  7. Why is marketing differentiation important in the Convenience Industry category today?

  8. How and Where do leaders in the Convenience Industry start this differentiation?

  9. Give me an example? What and where are the points a Convenience Industry leader can use marketing differentiation?

  10. Where can folks in the convenience industry learn more?**http://conveniencemarketing.net/

View Details

**The Coronavirus Crisis Continues...

New protocols are being implemented by states...

And it's wreaking havoc on convenience stores, convenience distributors and suppliers/manufacturers supplying the channel.

It's also reconfiguring the industry and how it operates.

Employees are concerned. Convenience Stores are at risk of closing if an employee tests positive. And Distributors are working around the clock to make deliveries. Ditto for Manufacturers.

What you need right now are more insights and ideas to minimize your risk, stay open and operating, and ultimately, survive the crisis.

You can. In this new podcast, Tim Lazor of the Convenience Marketing Group discusses a new approach and new ideas to assure you and your team have thought through every possible way to prevent the spread of Covid-19 while serving customers and taking care of employees.*You'll Learn:***•What specific type of crisis this is, and how to manage it.
•How To Asses Your Stores, Gain Trust, Communicate Your Crisis Story.
•Think OCD About The Virus.
•Customers Approaching Your Store: Risks & Expectations
•Gas Pump Ideas
•Entering The Store: What The Customer Feels & Sees TODAY
•The New Foodservice Expectation
•Must Have Products & Pricing
•Hidden Opportunities & The Future Of A RECONFIGURED Category.
And much more!

Tim Lazor, President**http://conveniencemarketing.net/