Have you thought of advertising?

People like talking about the business. I attend church with a man who has over the years amassed a large number of fast food restaurants. I have always tried to talk to him, but it was always kind of a light conversation. I never felt like I got good information from him. Similarly my brother in law has always been involved in business but talking to him about it was like speaking a foreign language. Now I feel like I am on the opposite end of those conversations. There are very few people with whom I can have a meaningful conversation. Here is a typical conversation.

“Have you thought about advertising?”
“We primarily try to attract customers through online means it seems to be the most effective”
“I know someone ran an ad in the local newspaper”
“Did they get good results from that”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you try it?”

At this point I have come to realize that they don’t want a conversation or to learn about what I am doing. So I usually try to make them feel good about themselves since I don’t think there is anything for me in the conversation.

“Yeah Maybe I should try that”

So let me talk a little about attracting customers. We had some 15,000 customers last year. We are a retail store. Currently our customers come into the store to buy things. They are best marketing tool. This has been true everywhere I worked. There is no better dollar spent than on making your current customers advocates for you. So before I advertise in the local newspaper I want to make sure that the people walking in the door are happy that they came in.

When I first bought the store and started working I observed some strange behavior. The employees were sometimes rude to customers. For example a customer would come in and want to drop off a box for the postal carrier to pick up. We will not make a penny on that transaction. In fact they are not counted as part of the 15,000 customers we will get. Some of these drop-offs will ask for a receipt or ask us to tape the box for them. The employees had been trained to charge for a receipt and for taping (since we were not making any money from them) But in addition they openly despised the customers. They would say things like, “You know we don’t make any money from this” It struck me as so odd. They were almost telling the customer to take their business somewhere else. I asked around the franchise about this. Now I am new to this business but what I learned is that the retail shipping seems to be dying a slow death. Customers used to bring in a lot of packages but now with the ability for them to purchase their own shipping label online they don’t need us as much. A lot of store owners view these drop-off customers as vultures. Now being new I didn’t feel that animosity. I decided right then and there that we would be glad that anyone came into the store. “Can I give you a receipt?” We want them to be glad they came in. “Here let me tape that label on your box for you. No we don’t charge for that.” They may never come back and spend money with us, but they are not going to discourage anyone else from coming in either.

That was an easy change in policy. We want to help people as much as possible. We want them to be super glad they came in. We want them to tell all of their friends that they like coming to our store.

A discussion for another post is about discounts and promotions and pricing and how it relates to making customers our best advertising. There is a conflict of principles. But that is another discussion for another time.

Now I want to continue on advertising and marketing. Another strategy we have had is to make the store look fantastic. We can always improve that, but we have taken a lot of steps in that direction. I tell people that the gifts in our store are about 10% of our sales and 90% of our marketing. I mean that. I would rather have a good looking display that never sells than an ugly rack of cheap stuff that moves like crazy. I am not a liquor store. If all I was interested in was moving products I would sell cigarettes. There is nothing wrong with owning a liquor store (That’s what we call them here in CA. I found out that in other parts of the country they are more often referred to as convenience stores.) We are not competing with liquor stores.

Now 90% of our marketing is making people glad they came in the store. What about the other 10%. As part of a franchise there is a department that spends money on google adwords and other online endeavors. I don’t know if it is worth my effort trying to understand or influence what they do. I also pay a guy $59 a month to do more online search optimization. Again I have not spent enough time to make sure I am getting what I hope to get from that.

In addition to all of the above I am always on the lookout for where to spend more money on advertising. I tried yelp, which is a great place for people to find us. I asked how much would I have to spend to see a difference. They said $1000 a month. And then I asked how long would I have to do it. They said three months. I spent $3,000 and I did not see the difference. They tried to point out the increase in views. I told them I didn’t care I had to see people in the store. It did not work. I may try it again, but there are other things to try. I tried another online service Yodl. Same results. I tried EDDM (through the post office) nothing. We are taking out a full page ad in our local schools theater program. It only cost us $100. Our offer is that if they bring in the program they will get a free gift. I don’t think we will get a single customer, but we will see.

I get hit up often to try different advertising. I am willing to try almost anything. But I will want to see results. It is important to major in the majors so rather than chasing the last dollar of effectiveness I am going to try and spend more time understanding what we are doing online and what more we can do.

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