Pesky Problem
After having a record-breaking open house in spring of 2016, both the Ty’s team and the TM team were a little nervous going into the 2017 open house. Since customers typically do not purchase their mowers annually, we wondered if we’d have the market to handle another great year. On top of that, winter had been a tough season for Ty’s due to the lack of snow, so they were going into their open house down in sales for the first quarter. Ty had mentioned to us that he’d be happy making up half of the deficit at the open house.
This year, with it being the first year that both locations were under the same flag, we also faced a challenge of promoting both open houses and getting great responses for both being one week apart.
Marketing Strategy
Ensuring we had a long-term plan, and not something that could only be used for a few weeks leading up to their open houses, we worked on creative that could be used long before and long after the open houses were over – ones that would really leave an impact. We produced 4 very fun and entertaining commercial spots featuring their radio talent and Husker Legend, Damon Benning. The spots showed a fantasy version of Damon’s mind, interrupted by Ty, snapping him back to reality. Within days of running the spots, Ty’s was getting a lot of positive feedback from the ads. People off the street – and not just regular customers – stopped in just to tell them they’d seen the commercials and loved them. We also pushed these videos on social media where the videos were viewed nearly 15,000 times on YouTube alone. With the added publicity and talk about Ty’s, we were able to really push their upcoming open houses, gaining them a great deal of traction and a ton of response.
In additions to the multiple posts online leading up to the events, we went out the day before and day of the events to take photos and launch Facebook Live videos reminding people of the event.
TM Results
After selling a total of 70 Hustler mowers between the two companies open houses the previous year, Ty’s sold a total of 98 mowers the first year as one blended company, an increase of 40%. Total sales from the open houses delivered 86% more sales than their goal!
While sales results during the open houses were above expectation, the success allowed us to sign a year marketing contract with Tys where the success kept coming.