When we started?
The idea came about at the end of 2013, this is always a good time of the year for us to plan marketing and promotions for the following year.
As this is a quiet time of the year for my role this gave me time to research what we needed to get this set up.
When we first started researching the Pop up Shops we soon realised how different it would be here in Spain and it made us realise we need to do something different to make it work.
The key factor to making a Pop up Shop work is to go somewhere where there is a high footfall of people and unless you go to the big shopping malls out here the little towns are quite quiet.
The idea behind the Pop up Shops for us is to run an ongoing promotion up and down the Costa Blanca to create awareness of the products and services we offer.
The initial plan is to do one at the beginning of the month in an area in the North of the Costa Blanca, then one week towards the end of the month in an area in the South of the Costa Blanca.
Research on Areas
The first thing I did was to email all of the big shopping malls to see how much it would be to set up for a week in each one, it was very expensive and when we worked out how many sign ups we would need to cover the cost it just didn´t work out so we went back to the drawing board!
The next thing I did was research areas that we needed to promote in especially ones that we can offer our own wireless infrastructure too, as this is maximum promotion for us.
The areas I wanted to choose needed to have large expat communities as we are an English Company in Spain and the majority of our clients are expats.
The next step was for me to go to the areas and ask around to see where the busiest place was, get in with the locals and see how I could promote each area to give us maximum publicity.
Marketing Ideas
We wanted to promote this event heavily for each area a couple of weeks before each event through the Euro Weekly News and also in the area itself.
We came up with an idea to get the local shops and businesses involved in each specific area before, during and after which could make everyone in the area feel like they are part of it and make it feel like more of a community thing.
Pop up Spots:
We thought the way to get everybody involved would be to set up the local shops and businesses as Pop up Spots in each area to help generate more business for everyone on the weeks leading up to the event and for the actual week we are there.
We decided to run a raffle in each area and all shops participating would get a Pop up Spot sticker (as shown above) which they would stick on their window meaning if anyone buys anything from their shop/restaurant/hairdresser etc… a couple of weeks before we are there and on the week we are there, the customer can enter into the competition to win a book of 5 x 20€ vouchers which can be spent in any participating shop in the area.
We will supply the entry forms and the box (design below) which can be put on the counter for the forms to be placed. The draw will be made at the end of the promotional week in the area. We feel this could be good for the local businesses to help generate more sales around this time.
The other good thing about this is that once we have created the relationship with the local businesses we can then work with them again in the future.
Chosen Areas:
- Jalon
- Orba
- Quesada
- Pedreguer
- Gata
- Oliva
- Javea
- Benidorm
After researching lots of different areas I chose the ones above as felt we would be able to get the most from them, unfortunately it proved difficult to get more areas down South so the plan for 1 in the North of Costa Blanca and 1 in the South of Costa Blanca per month didn´t really work but the most important thing for us is that wherever we go needs to produce a certain amount of brand awareness and have a good footfall of people.
With each area there were different options of places to go, whether it be in a square (I had to get permission from the Town Hall), or outside a bar or someone’s business, look out for the blog listing where we went and how we had to organise each one.
Don´t forget to look out for the next blog where we will tell you how we created the actual mobile Pop up Shop….
