subject: What Do Brick and Mortar Businesses and Online Businesses Have in Common? [print this page] What Do Brick and Mortar Businesses and Online Businesses Have in Common?
I feel like it is 1999 all over again when I am talking to a merchant and they tell me that they have a website. Most feel like just because they are on the internet that traffic should flock into their business and that they should be getting rich and famous. If I make a sales call I get asked all the time for my website so that they can look us up on the internet. A virtual site makes a brick and mortar real.
As a merchant you have to use all the tools available on the internet to leverage the power of the internet to bring traffic to your location in the real world. For most brick and mortar merchants it will never be totally profitable to try and sell their product from a virtual store. 40 years ago as a business owner we would place a newspaper ad and could measure who came. If we were feeling ambitious we would buy radio spots, and if the budget would allow it we would even buy TV spots. The problem with those ads was three fold. First we never knew who was going to se them because of shelf life of each method. Second we never knew who we were targeting our ads towards. Lastly to overcome the first two, we would have to spend more than we would make.
Are smart social marketer today can reach a very targeted market that has a desire to buy whatever service you may have to offer for very few dollars. In the past a full page ad in a metro newspaper might be seen by 30,000 people and draw in 300 people. This ad would cost upwards of $250,000 just for the one weekend. I hope I never spend that kind of ad money again. Today I can target 50, 000 people who have an interest in my product for less than $30.00 in cash outlay per month.
The key to using the internet for advertising is not to draw people to just your website but to also draw them into your brick and mortar location. Now you can have a conversation with as many people as you like all at the same time and do it as often as you like. Staying in touch daily whether it is through organic media or through email keeps you in front of your customer base. Providing content to them more so than advertising will make them a warm customer as opposed to someone who has bought something from you before.
Small business owners can use simple free web based tools to limit the amount of time that is required to run a great media campaign. Larger merchants should have a full time staff person handling timely updates and fielding incoming questions from your web based traffic. It will also give the customer a point of contact in your operation when they do come through your front door.
