Blog: Want to spur big foot traffic? Try some of these fresh ideas

How do you get Bigfoot into your mattress store? Easy. Lure him in with a big bag of beef jerky.

How do you generate big foot traffic in a mattress store? Now that’s a much tougher proposition, but Dos Marcos does have several ideas at the ready.

The Dos Marcos team — Englander’s Mark Kinsley and Spink and Co.’s Mark Quinn — used a Bigfoot sketch to add interest to their recent talk at Nationwide Marketing Group’s Mattress University session in Houston.

I was in the room, and I joined the 400-plus retailers in the audience in laughing at the clever way that the two Marks featured Bigfoot, played by Nationwide’s Johnny Lamp, in their talk. For details on that, see my story on their talk on pages 14-15.

Here, I want to highlight several of the creative ideas that Dos Marcos shared as they gave retailers suggestions on how they can increase foot traffic to their stores. That’s the No. 1 challenge facing retailers today, Quinn said.

How about stealing a page from “The Princess and the Pea,” and asking consumers if they can find the mattress resting on a bag of money? That gives RSAs a chance to talk about the various comfort layers in the different mattresses on the sales floor.

Or how about letting a puppy hang out at your mattress store, and then reaching out to dog lovers with dog adoption events in the store? “A company that cares about animals shows consumers that it isn’t just all about selling stuff,” Quinn observed.

What about Talk to the Parrot Night? Bring in a trained parrot, and let consumers interact with the parrot.

(Tempur Sealy International provided a powerful testimony on the power of animals the following day, when three domesticated monkeys interacted with retailers visiting the TSI space. The retailers absolutely loved the monkeys, and so did I, as the photo above illustrates.)

Quinn and Kinsley also noted that most mattress stores have kitchens and said hosting cooking classes is another great idea.

Another fun idea: Host a duct tape competition. A king-sized mattress box is “a canvas for kids,” Quinn said. “Turn something ordinary into something extraordinary,” he said.

Kinsley said their list of ideas resulted from brainstorming sessions, and he encouraged retailers to do their own brainstorming work. A good tactic: “Say, ‘Yes, and…’” to each idea. And don’t shut any ideas down, he added.

Now, you might be thinking that some of those Dos Marcos ideas just won’t work in your store. And maybe they won’t. But — news flash! — you won’t get different results if you don’t try some different tactics.

Kudos to Dos Marcos for providing creative, actionable strategies for building traffic.