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Sometimes retail shop owners have the “open and wait” mentality. I put my stuff out, run some ads and wait, right?
Well, that does work for some, but if you’re finding that it doesn’t work well for you or that all this talk about a downturn in the economy is keeping people away, then maybe you need to hit the bricks a bit.
Just today a gift basket shop owner wrote to me and asked what she could do to get more traffic. I advised her to network and go look for strategic partners. (This is really good advice no matter the industry) It probably sounds a little foreign to some retailers, but a little out of the store hustle goes a long way.
So, our gift basket shop owner would approach businesses and show them how to use her product to generate more referrals and create customer loyalty. A flower shop could approach a remodeling contractor and suggest a customer wow program that involved sending a bouquet of flowers thirty days after a project is finished. (Now of course there’s nothing to stop you from reaching out to the florist and suggesting a reciprocation of some manner as well.)
There are literally hundreds of ways to approach this strategy. The key is to frame the partnership around what your potential partner wants. It’s never about you and your business, show them how to use your products and services to get more of what they want.
Keep at this kind of relationship building and your business will be recession proof.
Comments
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at Apr 13, 08 | 9:41 am and is filed under Referral Marketing, Strategic Partnering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
About four months ago The Boss opened up an extension of her wholesale business in the form of a retail store. One of the reasons it’s already profitable, fully eight months ahead of the norm, is networking.
Of course she’s also leveraging her website, and created a new one, which has also been very effective in generating store traffic. But the networking has also shown to have impressive and direct impact on the bottom line.
Networking is king in the world of business, and a referral from a satisfied client is a guaranteed sale. Supplying business to business is also easier than ultimate retailing, aiming to provide an essential service / product to business is more of a guarantee of success in difficult times than marketing a luxury to the public could prove to be.
Your advice and that in the comments is right on target for the gift basket shop owner.
I advise that she network not just with fellow business owners, but those of us in the gift basket industry who offer free tips, advise, sources and business success strategies in forums, blogs and newsletters. (I’ve been in the gift industry for 16+ years.)She will gain a tremendous amount of ideas in a short period of time.
When all is said and done, of course, how much she’s willing to actively market, bring her website up to speed and implement great customer service will determine her success.
By coincidence, I responded to a gift basket shop owner today about this same dilemma.
I suggested that she:
1) Promote events based around grade and high school students that encourage traffic from students, parents and faculty.
2) Create contests that feature local talent or events that piggyback off monthly celebrations.
A low budget inspires owners to become creative in their sales approach. That’s what works for the shop owners that consult with me.
Shirley Frazier
Author, How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Business
The thing I find is that most small business people have dozens of great marketing ideas like this already… they’re just not doing them! They’ve read books, been to seminars or just plain had a good experience somewhere else that they could emulate.
It takes having a big enough problem to shock them out of the day to day grind of just keeping things going, and give them the motivation to seek outside help. I bet after you told them this idea John they were probably thinking “I could have thought of that myself!” But they didn’t.
Outside perspective is always useful.
Insightful post and I have to agree. I live in a small town where I’ve gotten to know many merchants. Some are stuck in the traditional ways of doing business and don’t think of the suggestions you mentioned or things like Google Local with their coupons.
I’ve got a new home sales consultant who relies heavily on referrals. After working with him, I used a similar principal of hitting the streets. Now he has gone to a nearby locally owned restaurant and purchased gift certificates to pass out as gifts to those strategic referral clients (those who bring him business). The key is, because it’s a locally owned restaurant and not some “who-cares-who-you-are-chain”, my client pays only 1/2 for the gift certificate…in other words, he comes out with a $50 gift certificate to WOW his referral clients with, but he only paid $25 for it (because the restaurant owner loves the 99% guaranteed customer!)
A Companion Bread store opened on our street, and the owner (who doesn’t work at this location), took the time to come to each shop up and down the street with a loaf of fresh-baked bread to drop off.
It worked - we spent over $100 at the store in the first month, on off hours, and considering how busy it is, i’m sure it’s been replicated.
We have lots of little retail stories in the area of our office - I’m sure the proprietors refer people to Companion because the owner took the time to meet us.
I could not agree more that networking and word of mouth is of great importance to the growth and in many cases survival of businesses as competition and traditionally high marketing costs equates to a smaller customer base.
Creating a viral (word of mouth) campaign is not only free but the returns can be huge. Given the option, people will always choose to buy based on recommendation and have become less trusting of the advertising and marketing that bombards us 24 hours a day. Brownbook.net http://www.brownbook.net/ is a website that has firstly taken notice of how people like to buy and secondly is sympathetic to the challenges faced by businesses.
Brownbook.net is a free online business directory that anyone in any country can use to edit, add or review businesses anywhere.
List your business for free and encourage existing customers and friends and family to write reviews.
Brownbook.net needs customers too so perhaps this could be the start of a beautiful relationship!
Regards
Ben
Brownbook.net
http://www.brownbook.net/