Today’s topic is all about conducting grand re-opening celebrations.
I’m doing this almost every single day or maybe a day ahead, sometimes I’m doing them the same day that they’re coming out. I do that because things are so insane with the economy. And things are just changing left and right, front and center—like every day, there’s always something different going on.
However, I want to share a strategy with you that I think could make a lot of strategic sense because we’re seeing really great results with the clients that we’re actually executing this with. The good thing with this is it can be used in one of a couple of situations.
The first situation is if your business had to close due to the Coronavirus or any state or city regulations forced your business to close, for example. Finally, once things settled down, you either are opening up in the next week or two, you just opened, or you finally have a date that you can re-open.
What I’d like you to do is to start putting out emails. Start putting out Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and a variety of different tactics. Have a sign made for the front of your location, and we’ll talk about what do you do if you don’t have a physical location. But if you had to close, I want the sign to read something like “grand re-opening”. I don’t want it to just say “now open”, I want it to say “grand re-opening”.
This really needs to be turned into something that just shows that you’re a new and improved business. We’re actually seeing a lot of great success with this phrase of “grand re-opening and we’re so excited to have you back”. You’ve got to show enthusiasm—you’ve got to show compassion. And now more than ever, you also have to really continue to convey the cleanliness aspect.
I never thought that I would be doing content around putting out material to make sure that you’re conveying that your business is spotless. Obviously, there are some industries that should be spotless regardless of any given situation and day, like restaurants. Now more than ever, however, you need to be conveying the new things that you have in place. It’s not just “oh, we have hand sanitizer. We have new processes and protocols to keep you safe, and our team safe, and here is what we’re doing.”
I really want you to just push the content push the message around this grand reopening. Now, even if you didn’t close, I still want you to use the same language. And even if you’re a service-based business that doesn’t have an office, like landscaping. Why couldn’t you do a grand reopening celebration? Because really what you’re doing here is you’re trying to put this COVID stuff in the past and start to reframe the conversation.
Now, people are going to be concerned for quite some time. So it’s not that the whole COVID thing has just gone away and disappeared. I don’t want you to have to keep continuing to have that conversation. When you advertise for your grand re-opening, I want you to look at if you can do some fun specials? Does it make sense to do a controlled, open house, for example? Do some fun giveaways? But again, in tandem with doing this grand reopening, you have to make sure that you are addressing the concerns.
If you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which I did an episode on a month or so ago, safety is among the top concern. Regardless of the type of business that you’re operating in, that is going to need to be conveyed. When you’re doing this grand re-opening, you’re should be talking about the new policies, the new procedures, and what you’re doing to ensure their safety.
I also want you to have some other things throughout your physical location, on your website, or your social media that also just show that things are starting to move back in the right direction and you’re still the same business that you were two months ago—you’re just new and improved.
If you were doing oil changes, for example, you think people want to now go and sit in those tiny little rooms with 10 other people, for example? What are you doing to ease all those people’s minds? What are you doing to show that you’re still around and you’re not going anywhere? I want you to show that here are the different things that you have done to continue to move that business in the right direction.
However, I don’t want the conversation to be all around COVID. I want it to be around the community. I want you to start touching base on all the things that you did the last month or two, that may they may need to be reminded on.
Did you make any donations? Did you retrain your team? What did you do to connect with the community? Like a lot of businesses have done a lot of amazing things to the local community. I want you to talk about that stuff, and I need you to bring the conversations forward in a positive manner. Otherwise, my concern is that you’re going to try and operate business as usual, but it’s not business as usual. It’s business in the new normal—it’s business in kind of post COVID. It’s not the same that it has been for you a couple of months ago.
So that is why I’m really trying to push this concept home of the grand reopening, that also allows you to covertly showcase some of the things that you’ve done to improve the safety, cleanliness, the security, and all of that stuff, regardless of whatever business you have.
I can start to think of dozens and dozens of different businesses that are going to have to convey this.
Tax preparation business—you normally wouldn’t worry about using someone else’s pen or sitting in a chair or worrying about all the people that were there earlier. Well, now people are going to start thinking about that.
What if you are renting things from a party rental place? People used to rent bounce houses all the time. What are you doing to showcase that those bounce houses are being sanitized flawlessly so that there isn’t anything on those?
You got to make sure that you’re also pivoting but control the conversation, a grand re-opening celebration—not a rebranded it’s just a word continuing to come back with a vengeance. “We are back with a vengeance. Here’s what we’ve done to further improve you.”
Hope you enjoyed today’s episode tune back in here tomorrow.
Get out there, make a change, and take some action.