Summertime is the season when women use less makeup and with the downturn in the economy that could mean even lower sales this next quarter. However, by promoting the right products you can help recover, or even increase your summer cosmetics sales! Here are five products to focus on promoting this summer.

1. Nail Polish

Overall cosmetic and toiletry sales were down by 0.8% last year. But nail polish is the only cosmetic to see a double digit increase  – 14.3% since last year -  because many women are giving themselves manicures and pedicures at home and skipping pricey salon visits. Summer is also the season when nails see the most exposure, so make sure your consumers have plenty of bright summer shades to choose from.

2. Bronzer and Sunless Tanners

Sun-kissed skin is always a fashionable look and is especially sought after in summer months. Stock your shelves with sunless tanner products since consumers often want to give their tans a jump start before appearing at the beach or pool in their swim suits. Bronzers also contribute to looking more tanned and summery so be sure to have plenty on hand.

3. Lip Protection

Frequent sun exposure can cause burnt, chapped, and uncomfortable lips. Make sure you are promoting lip products with SPF, aloe, and other cooling/healing ingredients. Lip balms are among consumers’ top impulse purchases, so make sure to have a display somewhere near checkout as a reminder for them.

4. Sunscreen

Sunscreen is a must-have when the summer months roll around because skin protection is important, not just for women, but for the whole family. Have a wide variety of sunscreens to choose from and feature them prominently in your store and remind associates to suggest it with every other summer-type purchase.

5. Moisturizers

Consumers have more exposed skin in summer than any other time of year. After all of the sun’s exposure to bare skin, you can bet your consumers will want to keep their skin hydrated. Moisturizers that contain sunless tanner are great to promote because your consumers get two products in one, making them feel the great value of the product.

Winter Park, FL - 100 Walgreen’s stores recently hosted a Maybelline makeover event introducing new eye and lip products to their Florida consumers. A professional makeup artist was on hand at each store to apply Studio Pearls Shadow, Lash Stiletto Mascara and Shine Sensational Lip Gloss in mini eye and lip makeovers to delighted customers. In just 2 days, over 800 makeovers were performed resulting in more than 1000 pieces sold. According to a survey consumers took during the event, over one-third had never tried Maybelline products before, 33% purchased something that day and another 62% said they would make a Maybelline purchase in the future because of this event.

While there, the makeup artist personally trained the store’s Beauty Advisor on the brands so that they may assist future customers. Walgreens stores have an average of 3 beauty advisors per store – the only drug chain with beauty help in all stores.

The event was facilitated by Cosmetic Promotions, Inc – a promotional and marketing company headquartered in Central Florida who handles a slate of marketing programs for the #1 drug chain. As budgets get cut and staff is reduced, Retail stores are utilizing more third party companies to assist in building sales. By hiring outside firms to fill out their lean marketing, chains are finding great results with less time investment.

Cosmetic Promotions prides itself on providing totally turnkey programs for retail chains. For their in-store demo’s they create an “event in a box” kit that is sent to each demonstrator to bring into the store, eliminating the chance of items getting lost before the event. A standard kit includes the products, custom made signs and a beauty basket giveaway that customers can enter to win. “Our makeup artists have a minimum 2 years experience applying cosmetics and we do live telephone trainings before each event” says Joann Tyson, the company’s CEO; “We also train them on selling tips and give them the proper tools so each artist can execute the event. This is why a standard rate of sales at one of our events results in selling about one week’s worth of product in just 4 hours”

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For more information on Cosmetic Promotions, contact Joann Tyson at 888-644-9916 or visit our website: www.cosproageny.com.

Winter Park, FL – The prestigious women’s magazine, Vogue Magazine, sponsored Cover Girl makeovers at 14 Florida market Walgreens stores. The professional makeup artists were demonstrating the new Lash Blast Mascara and promoted the Magazine’s latest sweepstakes – a chance to win an Andrew Marc Salina Handbag – by distributing trend sheets to attendees.

The event offered customers a wonderful Cover Girl gift-with-purchase cosmetic bag, which helped sell over 152 pieces during the event – a 62% closure rate. A survey conducted during the event showed that a whopping 81% of customers surveyed had used Cover Girl before and 99% of them wanted more makeover events at Walgreen’s. Over 59% of the customers were within the target age group (25-50) of the brand and magazine.

Cosmetic Promotions, a promotional and marketing company based in Central Florida executed the event. They handle many programs for magazines at retail stores. Their trained makeup artists have a minimum of 2 years experience applying makeup and execute events all over the United States. The magazines offer the makeovers as a bonus to their clients who purchase more pages in the publications.

“Customers were thrilled with the event, these are good results” says Rachael Cohn, Beauty Promotion Director from Vogue Magazine.

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South Florida Walgreens (March 6, 2010) – CosPro Agency recently held another successful demonstration at Walgreens locations across southern Florida. The event promoted and demonstrated the new CoverGirl Lash Blast Length mascara in order to amplify product sales and create product awareness.

The product was incredibly well received by consumers. Fourteen stores sold 152 pieces averaging eleven pieces sold, per store, in only four hours! The closure rate was very high; for every three makeovers done, two of those made purchases. Over sixty percent of customers made purchases that day and thirty percent said they will definitely be purchasing Lash Blast Length in the near future. In addition, twenty percent of the customers didn’t know the product beforehand so it was a great event for product awareness. With the chance to try a new product before buying, an enticing gift-with-purchase and knowledgeable demonstrators to help customers make educated decisions – this event was a hit!

Additionally, at least one beauty advisor per store was trained on the product and will be able to assist customers for future sales. And almost all (99%!) of the customers agreed that they enjoyed the event and would love to see more product demonstrations and sampling.

For additional information on samplings and demos please email Kristin Bocox at kristin@cosmeticpromotions.com or call (877) 326-7776 ext 501.

The CosPro professional demonstrators promoted L’Oreals hair products and provided FREE color consultations at 15 Rite Aid locations during July. The Everpure line and Feria Hair Color were the center of attention during this promotion which was sponsored by Lucky Magazine.  The event resulted in 761 products sales; averaging 15.5 pieces sold PER STORE! For every 10 demonstrations, 8 products were sold. There were also 2,500 samples of Everpure distributed which will result in future sales once the customer try this sulfate-free line.  Many customers were also thrilled with the color consultations done learning what color is right for them, over 900 consults were performed. 

As retailers looked for ways to combat  the slowing Back to School Sales, CosPro Agency coordinated an effort across various brands to introduce several products to the Winn-Dixie customer during that time period.  Professional makeup artists conducted over 6,500 demonstrations in 25 top Florida Winn-Dixie stores over 4 weekends. The event featured products from Wet n Wild, Maybelline, Nailene, Olay and L’Oreal to name a few.

The event was pre-promoted in store and Winn-Dixie sent out emails to their Loyalty Club members. The event resulted in over 1,100 immediate sales translating to almost 12 sales per store!  Customers were thrilled to receive a gift bag filled with goodies and coupons and over 7,200 were distributed during the event. In addition, customers could sign up to win a Beauty Basket Raffle. The event was so successful Winn Dixie plans to do an encore in upcoming months.

CosPro Agency executed another incredibly successful event!  Our professional makeup artists promoted Maybelline’s Color Sensational Lip Color and the Pulse Perfection Mascara wand in 479 CVS stores nationwide over the last two weekends in September! 44% of the customers that received the demonstration had not tried either of these products – so this provided great product awareness. And the CVS customer appreciated being able to test the products.

The event resulted in over 5,100 sales — averaging 10.5 pieces of product sold at each store in just 4 hours!  For every makeover performed, the makeup artists at least one product and we averaged 125% closure rate!

The RITE AID Glam Camp program delivers fun and exciting product samples straight into the hands of teens at local community events throughout the nation. The program, in its 3rd year, is completely facilitated by Cosmetic Promotions Inc (CPI) – a national marketing and promotional company that specializes in promoting beauty products for mass retailers and vendors.

On November 28th through the 30th, Cosmetic Promotions handed out Teen bags on behalf of Rite Aid at the Miss Teen PA USA Pageant. The pageant took place at the Hyatt Regency in Pittsburgh, PA with an attendance of 2,000 each evening. Girls ages 14 to 26 from across Pennsylvania participated in the swimsuit, evening gown and interview competition. The girls who win this pageant will go on to compete for Miss Teen USA.

The bags were filled with products and coupons geared towards the teen market. There were 1,000 bags handed out and the girls commented “I love this lip gloss!” , “Do we get to keep the bags?” , “This is great!”, “Oh, I needed that!”. The coordinator also commented, “Once again the bags were a success” and they are looking forward to sampling with us again next year. The Miss PA Teen and Miss USA pageant welcome the Glam Camp Bags and put in a request for them every year.

One of the Nation’s Largest Black Art Expos, the Philadelphia International Art Expo, celebrated twenty four years this weekend at Temple University. The aisles were filled with people interested in buying, selling and enjoying works of African American art of all kinds. The Expo was more than just traditional art however; book fairs, writing workshops, live poetry and music, a job fair and even a comedy show were among the many events that took place at the Liacouras Center throughout the weekend (November 13-15). We were onsite Saturday afternoon and were able to greet many happy faces. The ladies receiving the gift bags were very excited about the samples enclosed and couldn’t wait to see if they were winners of one of the $100 gift cards being given away. It only took a few hours to distribute all 2,000 bags. This Expo served as the kickoff of the October Gallery’s 25th Anniversary Celebration taking place next year, which they hope we can also be a part of.

Patience is not often lauded as a virtue in the sales world. Usually the focus is on creating urgency, moving forward and closing deals. Some may even mistake patience as a form of procrastination, however, sales professionals who dismiss patience are overlooking a powerful and little utilized tool. Any successful sales person will be very familiar that building a good sales relationship takes time and persistence.

Now, persistence does not mean calling the prospect each week to see if they are ready to sign yet – you do not want to be a pest. Persistence simply means staying in touch with prospects in a way that builds the relationship and positions you as a valuable resource and trusted advisor.

The Rule of 7 is a fairly well known marketing concept which says: a prospect needs to see, hear, or otherwise be exposed to a message at least seven times before they respond in some way, shape or form. In other words, if you don’t have a contact strategy that touches the prospect at least seven times, you significantly reduce your odds of sales success. Optimally, you should be using a mix of vehicles for those 7 touches from emails, articles, webinars, phone calls and direct mail campaigns in order to reach your contact and get that first interview and begin building a relationship. Try to provide value in each communication in order to gradually move them closer to seeing you as the expert they can go to when needed.

Patience should be utilized in all aspects of your sales relationship. From prospecting to sales calls, to negotiating, to purchases, in this current economy customers have smaller budgets that they are being asked to do more with and are therefore taking longer to make sure they make the correct decisions, consider all their options and get the most bang for their buck. As a sales person, you need to make sure that you have the patience to follow up with them until they have time to talk, listen attentively to all of their problems/concerns and take the time to go through each with them.

Patience shows the customer that you care and that you are willing to take your time with them to make them happy. Customers love to feel that they are special, because they are. The more attention that you give to a customer, the more that they will feel that they are buying a product from a genuine and loyal person who wants to help them make a smart buying decision.

Selling is tough. Just remember that what we do is difficult and the relationships essential to success are not forged overnight. It takes time to build trust and credibility and prospects are going to engage you when they are ready. You can’t force them into meeting with you or buying from you. You need to have patience to guide them along the decision-making process and persistence to not give up. Sooner or later the prospect that took you 10 months just to get a meeting and another year to close could mean tons of repeat income to your firm.

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”  Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

“He that can have Patience, can have what he will.” Benjamin Franklin

This article was written by Tracie Gilbert, VP of Business Development at Cosmetic Promotions. For more information on Cosmetic Promotions, please check out their website www.cosproagency.com or contact Tracie direct at Tracie@cosmeticpromotions.com.