With so many smoke shops out there, what can you do to make yours stand out?
Like any successful retailer, the first step is defining your niche. Next is offering unique products and services — and hosting events is a great way to bring those unique offerings to a wider audience.
Smoke shop events are a great tool for connecting with customers, driving sales, and building your brand — but coming up with great smoke shop event ideas can be tough.
We’re here to help. Here are some of our top ideas for smoke shop events, along with some tips and tricks to ensure they’re a success.
Before You Start — Know Smoke Shop Advertising Rules
Hosting an event is, for all intents and purposes, an advertisement for your shop. Because of that, any event you host must follow the FDA’s tobacco advertising and promotion rules.
Here are the key points:
- You can’t sponsor other (non-tobacco) events
- You can’t advertise to minors
- Many products require a prominent visual health warning
- You can’t give out free samples
Read through yourself, and ensure you take note of any local rules and regulations. With a firm understanding of the rules, you can come up with smoke shop event ideas that are both successful and fully compliant with the law.
5 Smoke Shop Event Ideas To Reach New Customers
Hosting events is a great way to drum up interest in your shop and build an identity around your brand. However, when you think about smoke shop event ideas, don’t take a scattershot or generic approach.
Instead, craft a winning event idea by thinking about:
- Your bestselling items: Come up with events that are centered around items that already perform well.
- Peak hours and seasons: Make sure your event timing lines up with when customers actually visit your store. You can also find when your busiest seasons and holidays are to ensure you’re investing money and effort into the right times of year.
- Your customer base: You see another shop run a highly successful vaping and gaming event and want to replicate their success. How would that work if your customers tend to be older and into cigars? Tailor events for your customers, not on what works for other shops.
- Your connections: Leverage your connections with other local businesses to create unique cross-promotional events.
Don’t forget to leverage the reports on your point of sale (POS) system system to gain insights into your customers’ preferences.
Here are five smoke shop event ideas to get your juices flowing.
1. Product Launches and Tastings
Once you identify your top-selling items, drive repeat business by hosting events for new product releases in those categories. For example, if vapes are popular in your shop, host an event to showcase new flavors and pens.
Remember, you aren’t allowed to give away free tobacco samples, but you can use your POS system to create a custom sample set and sell it at a steep discount.
Another tip: any store event is also a social event. When customers show up for product launches or tastings, they won’t just be looking to try new products but to learn more and network with other tobacco enthusiasts. Keep your staff up to date on the latest products and ready to make recommendations.
2. Special Discount Days and Holiday Sales
Offering limited discounts is a no-brainer. Think of Black Friday, holiday, clearance sales, and all of the other discounts offered in the retail industry. Discounts are an effective tool in retail to drive repeat business and to upsell customers, so your smoke shop should use them, too.
Use your POS system to find which holidays and seasons are your busiest and create unique promotions to support them. Set up displays and custom product bundles that fit the season. For example, you could sell a sleek black vape pen and fall flavors around Halloween or offer customizable gift packs at Christmas.
You could also have repeating discount days for certain types of products. For example, you could offer buy one, get one (BOGO) at a certain time every Monday or in-store discounts on the last Friday of the month. Set these days based on your business goals.
Are you trying to increase sales on a day that’s usually slow? Or maybe you want to increase sales volume during your peak hours? No matter what, don’t choose days at random.
Pro tip: Discounts are not only great for driving repeat business but are also effective for highlighting and selling slow-moving inventory.
3. Educational Events
Many people are interested in learning more about cigars, vape pens, rolling papers, and other products, but don’t know where to start. As a smoke shop owner, this gives you a chance to share your expertise while connecting directly with customers and encouraging sales.
Host educational events that teach people the basics of different topics like selecting tobacco for pipes, how to select and use different rolling papers, or even how to do vaping tricks. Whatever topics you’re passionate about are potential topics for events.
Make sure that any educational event features certain products and that those products are ready to buy (even at a discount) after the event is over. People are more likely to purchase a product when they’re confident in how to use it.
4. Music, Food, or Comedy Events
Many people love to socialize and have a smoke, but with rules and regulations around smoking in public places, there are fewer opportunities to do so. Hosting a cookout, music, or comedy event can be a great way to bring your customers together while enjoying some entertainment.
The types of social events you can host will depend on the size of your shop and your city’s zoning rules. If you are hosting an event indoors, make sure you have adequate ventilation.
You could hold a raffle and giveaway products for the price of admission. When people are having a good time, they might be more willing to buy, so make sure your store layout entices customers to invest.
Related Read: Mastering Modern Smoke Shop Design: 5 Creative Ideas
5. Member-Only Events
If you haven’t already set up a customer loyalty program in your smoke shop, you’re missing out. Customer loyalty programs are a highly effective method for small businesses to drive repeat business.
With a database of your customers, you can look at historical data to understand their preferences and tailor your advertising accordingly.
A membership program can also provide easy promotional event opportunities. Offer exclusive discounts and product launch invitations for your customer loyalty members. A modern POS system lets you customize membership programs that fit your business and reach out to customers with promotional deals.
This idea can be especially appealing for high-end smoke shops like cigar lounges. A members-only cigar lounge creates a sense of exclusivity and gives you a chance to sell more high-end goods.
Tips To Ensure Your Smoke Shop Event Ideas Are a Success
Even the best smoke shop event ideas aren’t guaranteed to be successful if they’re not well executed. When planning your store’s events, keep the following tips in mind:
- Don’t forget marketing: A great event won’t be successful if no one knows about it. Leverage social media, customer data on your POS system, and your website to promote your event in advance. Make sure to post regularly and always highlight exactly when the event is and what’s on offer.
- Leverage technology: Your POS system is more than just a way to process payments. It can also give you reports on sales data, peak hours, and other metrics to find the areas where your store performs best. You can then use this information to tailor events to your customer’s interests.
- Train your staff: Make sure your staff are prepared for your various events. When customers go to independent smoke shops, they expect knowledgeable staff who can make recommendations. If your staff makes a bad impression at a special event, it’s unlikely those people will come back.
- Use modern age verification: When you open up your smoke shop to an event, it’s even more important to ensure all attendees are the legal age. Use modern age verification and ID scanning to stay compliant without inconveniencing customers.
- Monitor your events' success: Basing your event strategy on a hunch can be hit and miss. Use your POS system to measure how effective each event or promotion is. This will help you understand what worked (and what didn’t) and plan better events in the future.
As an independent smoke shop owner, use all of the tools and tricks at your disposal to make your events a success and increase your profits.
Maximize the Impact of Your Events With a Leading Technology Partner
There are a lot of great smoke shop event ideas out there — so where will you start?
Remember, when planning an event, make sure you:
- Tailor events to your customers’ interests
- Leverage customer loyalty and membership programs
- Share your expertise and guide customers
- Provide limited-time discounts and offers
Cigars POS, designed specifically for smoke shops, gives you everything you need to plan and run successful events and promotions.
Contact us today to find out how you can use your POS system to drive more customers to your business.
