I keep seeing new guides on how retailer marketers should tackle social media or mobile, on a near daily basis. It’s great that there’s boatload of content on these channels, but what about something more traditional like circulars?
There’s a good chance that not every retailer out there has an iron clad process for planning and executing a circular. So we put together a free best practice guide on planning circulars that highlights all the necessary steps from strategic annual planning to post event analysis.
Here’s a summary of the stages in the process. You can download the full version of our guide here. (Yes, it’s free!)
Annual Planning
This typically happens 1 to 2 years out, and where the senior retail marketing leadership defines annual strategies & priorities that the organization will focus on in the upcoming year. From the strategies, you’ll create campaigns, establish a top down budget, allocate space to business units, define specific events, and estimate the cost of the marketing plan.
Seasonal Planning
Here you’ll further refine campaigns & events, produce briefs, and plan store marketing concepts / elements.
Content Creation
Circulars are now versioned out by markets, and will have templates or layouts for the different pages. Business units with assigned space are notified to create offers.
Promotional Planning
Merchants within the business units will create offers, identifying the promotional items and markets. Meanwhile the production team takes the inputs from offers to request item photographs, and manage samples.
Finalizing Content & Production
The finalized offers flow into the pages with layouts, while the production team works through concepts and approves photos. Merchants can now proof the finalized pages for each market. The production team will send the proofed concepts to the printer, and the offers from the merchants go to the POS system, and the circulars go out to customers.
