Simple Things

In their search for bold marketing moves businesses often overlook the simple things.

Regularly on my way to pick up a coffee or go to the bank I pass our local village bookshop. It has a high street presence and it's windows are often nicely and thematically arranged with some of their latest books.

This is a great start but invariably the window display is changed only sporadically.

The greatest way to draw someone into a store is to give them a reason and often the reason is something new. What if my bookstore had a poster in the window changed each week which simply listed "New into store this week" items. This would allow me to quickly check whether any of the new items are of interest and make a determination to visit the store.

Now what if this was extended by the bookshop and the next time I visited they asked me for my email address so they could email a weekly list of 'what's new in store'. What if they added am author 'watch list' to this so I could be alerted when any of my favourite authors had a new release. And then what if they shared lists and content with, say, the local video store so I could also receive a 'what's new in store' list from them on a weekly basis. How about they started adding some local gossip or a blog from the shop owner.

All of a sudden they would have their own online community of local interest; they would know their local customers in a more intimate way which would further bind their customers to them; they would be providing a valuable service and driving more foot traffic into store. And best of all they could pull their regular weekly ad from the local newspaper which is nothing more than a useless banner anyway. The money saved can be used to further build the local online community of interest.

It is best to start with simple, creative (and often low-cost), customer-centric solutions before you start blowing money on traditional advertising campaigns.