What's missing from your marketing?

I was recently speaking at a networking event in Dallas, TX when a small business owner approached me and asked, "what's missing from my marketing". This person owns a boutique women's clothing store that is not getting enough customer traffic into the store. I asked her what does she do in terms of marketing and promotions at the store. She responded with, a weekly coupon mailer, weekly newspaper ad and yellow pages listing.

My response:

If you are implementing marketing strategies on a monthly bases and not getting your expected results, it's time to do two things. First, start measuring the amount of customers your are getting from each activity to determine if you are getting a return on your investment. Do this by counting the number of coupons that customers bring in each month. It's hard to tell how many customers you are getting from your yellow page or newspaper ad unless you have a special phone number or coupon code.

Evaluate the number of households, location and other demographic information of your coupon mailer program. Be sure that the right type of customer is receiving the coupon. For example, if you sell clothing at a high price point, consider sending the coupons to households with women in high income brackets. In the weekly advertisement, add a statement to mention the ad and get a discount. What this does is provides an incentive for the viewer to come into your store and shop. It's also a way to track how well the program is doing. Evaluate your ad size and its location within the paper. Talk with your sales representative and let them know of your concerns about your ad with them. It is most likely, they will assist you in developing a more effective campaign.

The second thing you want to do is consider where your store is located. Are you in a strip mall, free standing building or a kiosks inside of a facility? What kind of customer traffic comes to that location? Are other retailers experiencing low traffic as well? Take an hour or so and evaluate your store's location. Evaluate the following areas:

• The stores next to you - being next to a store with steady customer traffic is best.
• General area traffic - if the overall traffic of your location is slow you might want to consider moving.
• Accessibility - can customers easily get to your store? is there adequate parking?
• General appearance of the area - your store might be in good shape but the shopping mall, parking lot, or surrounding buildings might not.

After re-evaluating these four areas, determine whether moving to a new location would help boost the sales and traffic you need. If all else fails, hire a marketing consultant to develop a marketing strategy to help you grow.

http://www.themarketinglady.com/