Hi there

We are a Sydney (Australia) based rug shop with 3 stores. We have been in operation for 10 years and like other businesses during this economic period have felt a rapid decline in our sales.

I want to try some marketing initiatives as we have only invested in print ads that require a lot of money with very limited success.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to attract customers to the store? Especially anything creative?

As a customer what would bring you into the store? We used to focus on exclusivity and specialised service but now everyone is only interested in the lowest price and checks out all the competitors before doing their shopping so we have had to change our focus and have many sale and discount signs like our competitors to draw attention.

I was thinking of sending letters to our past customers....do you think this is worth the investment? How many letters would you need to send before receiving a response? What should the letter entail? What will make that customer (a) open the letter, (b) read the letter, (c) come to the store?

Does anyone have any suggestions???

Any thoughts/ideas/marketing strategies would be greatly appreciated!!!