3 Simple Tactics to Boost Your Small Business Customer Reach Guest Post by Kevin Kaiser Owning a small retail business is one of the most stressful positions. And it makes sense as 90% of retail stores fail within 5 years (or something similar to those numbers). That is astonishingly high. So how do you make sure that you are in that top 10% that succeeds? Having a great selection of products, an awesome in-store sales team, and impeccable customer service will allow your store to succeed locally. You’re a big dreamer, though! You want to sell to the world and why wouldn’t you with how easy it is to set up a retail website. The only problem is that many other people are looking at this opportunity as well, making the competition tough. You need more customers to actually visit your website to keep your business growing. Here’s one way to increase (or start) your local customer reach and two ways to increase your customer reach beyond your hometown. 1. Spread the Good Word (Locally). Mobile marketing is a phrase that will be around for the long-term. Foursquare and other location-based apps have become extremely popular in 2011 and they are only growing. As a small business, you have the ability to tap into these potential customers by marketing a special through the platform. Some ideas: Do some numbers and find what works for your business. You’ll be surprised at how successful these promotions are at driving in customers. At a local boutique that I work with, Elly’s Couture, we are starting to implement this strategy. And the initial results have been very positive, bringing in about 12 visitors in a month that ended up purchasing a product, purely because of the special we offered. Getting people to check in puts your business in front of every one of the customer’s friends, providing free word of mouth marketing. 1a. Social While not particularly associated with mobile marketing, Facebook and Twitter are the other big ways to engage with your customers online in an environment they are familiar with. At Elly’s, we like to announce new products and use the platforms to post our interactions with local customers. This local interaction that people can see online helps validate the website to visitors that don’t live in the local area. 2. Pay and Be Paid A PPC campaign is one of the most tedious acts of online marketing. You have to consistently be checking your (often multiple) campaign, tweaking it all the time to get the most return on your investment. But a carefully monitored PPC campaign can turn into a gold mine of local and national traffic to your website giving you tons of data into what your customers are looking for. And if it doesn’t bring in that traffic or make you any money, then you know not to focus your efforts on those keywords/products. At Elly’s Couture, this is how we determine if we want to...
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