Advertising and Marketing Ideas to Create Phenomenal Profits In YOUR Small Business

“Want To Guarantee That Your Small Business Or Retail Store Will Be Thriving 10 Years From Now? Do This!” PDF Print E-mail
“Want To Guarantee That Your Small Business Or Retail Store Will Be Thriving 10 Years From Now? Do This!”

Do this thought experiment….
Think about the customers you have had in the last few months.

What do they have in common, besides giving you money?
You’ll have people that don’’t fit into an average…
But you’ll end up with a large section of your recent customer base that is very similar.
If you think about what the highest profit customers have in common, you’ll come up with an “Ideal Customer”.

Ask yourself;
What is their average age?
Are they white collar workers? Blue collar workers?
Are they people who would listen to Country Music? Old Rock? Religious?
Would they watch the Weather Channel? Discovery? CNBC? FOX? Reality shows?

Don’t think about yourself & your preferences. Think about your customer’s.

For example,..,in my store, my best customer is age 45-70, They drive a newer car (less than 5 years old), they are homeowners (I know because I register warranties for them & recognize the streets). They will buy American if possible (but it’s not a deal breaker), They are a married couple or an older (65 or older)  single lady, They watch the Discovery channel (I actually ask sometimes), and even though we live in a Republican town, slightly more than half of my customers are Democrats (It’s a college town and that makes a difference).

Most of this information I get from warranty cards and casual conversation. During elections, I hear about the politics...but never say how I stand on any political subject. The people who agree with you will forget...and the people who disagree will never come back.
Anyway, the purpose of this exercise is to find out what kind of person tends to buy from you.

Now you can use this knowledge in two ways;
Now try to attract all the other people to your store. People who have other buying habits other than  buying from an independent retailer.
Make sure you attract more of the demographic that buys from you now.

The benefit of number two is that your store doesn’t have to change much, and neither do you. You just need to market more to your proven customer base.

Advertise on radio stations that they listen to now. Advertise on TV stations they watch now. Send direct mail to areas they live now.
And of course, send direct mail (or E-Mail blasts) to your current customers. ..because you know they will buy from you.

Remember that this article is about how to be profitable ten years from now?

OK, One way is to take the age of the person who is your ideal customers and go back 10 years in age. For example, my ideal customer base starts at 45 years old. So the people who would be my best customers in ten years are starting at age 35 now. If your average customer age is lower right now...this is even more critical to you.

What’s the big difference? Younger people are using the internet more than their grandparents.  I recently stood in line at a local Wendy’s. There were about 15 teenage girls in line in front of me. They were actually pretty quiet. Why? Where was all the screeching, laughing, & gossip you may expect? They were doing it….on their cell phones...texting...twittering (I promise, I’ll find out what that even means). As far as I knew ..they were texting each other. (OK, I’m having a little fun here).

But the signs are all around us.

Have you seen this year’s phone books? They are thinner. Less people have home phones.
More people have cell phones. And more people are going online for local product searches. (using whatever they have in their hand). Yellow Page searches (using the paper Yellow Pages) is way down. Newspapers are dying…..or are dead.
Go ahead ….go to the library, get a newspaper that is five years old...and compare to a current daily issue. The differences in thickness….and number of ads is startling.

My local paper now includes newspapers in the vending machines as circulation, and my rep admitted that they fudge the circulation figures (they count more than one reader per paper).

I’m an advertising expert (Go ahead, ask me if I am!). I get my newspaper ads for about 25% of the rate everyone else pays….

And I can’t make my newspaper ads pay. Why? Too few people reading the local paper.

But you know what’s paying better every month? Online searches. Customers coming to one of my websites...that leads them to my retail store.

This year more people bought clothing online than in retail stores. The day of “I don’t give my credit card number online because I don’’t trust it” are over.  We actually sell online too, Do you know the last time someone called because they didn’t want o give their credit card number online? It’s been months...maybe a year.

Want a prediction? In ten years, you’ll either have a smart, ongoing, automatic online marketing system in place, or you’ll be gone.

How long could your store stay in business if you didn’t have a phone...or accept credit cards?

Even Amish businesses have phones, and many accept credit cards. Why? Because most Amish have credit cards. (we have a large Amish community in this & the next county. About 10% of my customers are Amish. They still don’t drive cars).

Don’t panic, customers will still go to stores. They will still need what you sell, and we will still have the need for personal relationships that shopping tends to satisfy.

I’m simply talking about the marketing end of business.

There are many benefits to marketing your local business online. We have covered several in previous articles. Let me give three most powerful benefits.;
Customers need to feel confidence in you as a merchant. Being online, giving loads of information online, and answering questions online creates the beginning of a relationship far better, faster, stronger than any display ad (or radio, TV, Billboards, etc) could ever do.
Online marketing is Cheap. We spend less that $100 a month for our online promotions. And we are profiting a few thousand dollars a month from this alone. Not much, you say? That figure is rising faster than the national dept.  Nothing creates a new customer at a lower cost that online marketing….except referrals from satisfied customers….which you can get online.
The marketing is very self sustaining. I now spend a few minutes a month looking at my websites. Never more than an hour. The only real time I spend is when I’m adding a video, changing a price, or deleting a product that is no longer available.