With all the talk in the media in regard to retailers deep discounting their wares, where does this leave small independent retailers?
For one thing it provides an opportunity to step up the customer relationship. Large corporations cannot turn on a dime due to their size and complexity.
SME’s (small to medium enterprises) on the other hand are much flatter and can provide superior experiences. If you’ve been diligent at building your email database, you can start providing exceptional information for your customers.
You can provide them with valuable offers, open houses, and special cross-promotions. Take the opportunity to get out into your community and make your brand stronger in the eyes of those who affect your income.
Send out thank you gifts to your customers. If you are a retailer, reward them with thank you vouchers worth a nice reward should they show up at your location, up the ante if they bring along a friend.
Tie into a local food bank and have a promotion to help. The whole point this season is to step up your brand with home grown initiatives that are too targeted for the big boys to embrace but are perfect and easy for you to push your brand into public notice.
One idea could be to offer a 30 day (or whatever) countdown to service for Christmas. Send out daily emails with something great each day.
How about this one for a retailer: buy a batch of plain tree ornaments, get a local school class to decorate them with paints, then sell them at your locations with 100% of the proceeds going to a local charity. Guess where all the kids parents will go this season?
Make it fun and boost your brand as a gift to yourself.
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I find myself conflicted at this time with respect to the deep discount mentaility. One the one hand this is prime retail time, the low hanging fruit is there to grab, on the other, if everyone else is doing it then what chance do you have if you are not?
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Those are some great promotional ideas. You are right that smaller businesses do have the advantage of being able to directly connect with customers better. You have to play that advantage and show each of your customers that you care. Oftentimes people purposely choose to deal with a small business for that personal service.
Thank you for your comment Metal Briefcases. Small business need only step up to the plate.
It’s not the time to dwell on the size of a competitor but to celebrate your ability to deliver faster and better experiences.
Smaller businesses tend to focus on their clients’ needs. They have lots of time to spend to cater for high quality of service to their customers. I agree with Ed, take care of your customers first because they will surely help you topple down your competitors once you have proven your worth.
Brett, being a commodity driven business where what you sell is exactly what the competition sells is daunting as you point out. It is especially bad when large chains under-cut you by offering those ink cartridges at loss-leader pricing to get folks in the door.
What I would suggest you try is bundling a necessary group of services (that a typical good customer would love) give it a clever name and market it as a proprietary product of the Paper Shop. This “special bundle” is available FREE to all customers, or just to ink customers or whatever the target might be.
It is not always just about price. From my design side I compete against free quite often and still win. You’re still in business and I’ll bet you’re not always the cheapest – do some deep soul searching and determine why customers love you.
Jack not only time, but also with smaller businesses the customer is generally in direct contact with the owners.
Liked the bit about ‘home grown initiatives.’ This is all part of relationship building to which SMEs are well suited!
Thanks!
Ed, thanks for the tips, specially the answer to Brett’s comment was great.
-Mike
Connecting with your customers directly – that’s the ticket. Thanks for your opinion Denver.
Thanks for dropping by Secondary Sales, I appreciate your following and joining in on the discussion.
Customer relations is key. I advocate personal contact through a follow up call on our end to the customer to solidify the relationship. And you can upsell too.
Let’s hear it for personal contact Dog Tags. Thank you for your opinion.