Reach Your Customers
If you own a brick and mortar business you know the feeling of unlocking the front door, turning on the Open sign and waiting for customers to come visit your shop. Hours go bye and no one shows up. This is a common complaint by small businesses that are trying to compete with online retailers that offer online ordering from the comfort of home and shoppers don’t have to get dressed, get in the car, pay for tolls and gas to come visit you. What positions you to reach your customers and give them a reason to come to your place of business?
Over the last decades, online shopping has become the norm for many, including everyday staples, groceries, supplies and clothing. Until recently even the taxes weren’t a level playing field with online retailers enjoying a different sales tax rate and free shipping! In our niche, online skate shops could sell skates even cheaper than we could buy them to sell in our pro shop! Manufacturers were giving a break to online sellers, handling drop shipping and returns. So…what to do? How do we get customers in the door and reach your customers to let them know what sets your business apart and makes it desirable to visit in person?
A Good Website
With just about everyone looking online before making a decision of where to purchase their whatever is a great way to make sure your website is up to date, relevant and offer services they cannot obtain online.
Using skates for instance – they can’t try on the size and brand they want to purchase. If they order online and they don’t fit they have to be returned. If they come to the shop, they can be fitted properly, take advantage of the expert advice of knowledgable staff trained to make sure they get the best skate for their budget. You can’t get that kind of service on a website no matter how much information the site contains.
When your website has the right information that makes them want to come to your place of business, that the prices are comparative to what they would get if they came to your shop as online ordering – note the word comparative – not the cheapest but the best way to purchase whatever they want that you sell and add some enticements such as making your store welcoming and friendly, offering to spend the time to make sure they are happy with their purchase and no need to worry about clothing that doesn’t fit, gadgets that weren’t what they expected and making it easy to make the best decision by coming to you and your business.
A good website doesn’t need to be complicated, it needs to be engaging and easy to navigate, offer a way for potential customers to contact you right on the home page, not buried in some contact us link and make sure you respond when someone sends you a message.
Social Media
Hard to believe that social media didn’t exist in the early 1990’s! The different channels we’ve all come to rely on for sharing information, photos with family and friends, contact with the world has come so far so fast and now is a leading way to reach new people that are in your local area and might not know about you!
Our hyper local targeting widens your reach to your local people! Through relevant social posts on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Google Biz we can reach lots of people and illustrate why they need to come visit you! Not all social media needs to be advertising, just making people aware of your business and different things you offer and do can help them make the decision to visit your business. We’ve also found that educating people about what you offer helps to spread the word!
Email Campaigns
Email was one of the first ways we were able to reach our customers. Some people feel nowadays it’s outdated and not a viable resource but we disagree. One client of ours had never emailed his clients except for sending out estimates and invoices. We took his list and did a couple campaigns centered around their services and after the first one made 65 appointments the next day! Done right, email is still a very effective tool and we use it to your advantage to keep your name in front of your customers hopefully before they make that important decision of where to go and where to make their purchases.
We have over 25 years in marketing and sales with various businesses. There’s lots of ideas that we can offer you to make your brick and mortar business a boost and make it a destination that your customers will return to over and over, Give us a call or drop us a message and we’d be happy to talk about your dreams for success and help!