Over the next few weeks, I’m going to do a series on local business marketing planning for local or small enterprises. This is the sort of planning that you should be thinking about right now as the year winds down and another gets ready to launch:

1. What will you do differently in 2011?
2. What are your goals for 2011?
3. What is your unique strategy to connect with customers in 2011?
4. What media will you use to communicate with customers, vendors, prospects, employees, etc. in 2011?
5. What products/services, etc. will you offer in 2011? What will be different or the same from 2010?

And many more questions just like these? How do you answer those questions strategically – and literally – for your business, so that you get your new year off to a blazing start? It all boils down to your local business marketing plan for 2011. That’s what we’ll be unpacking in the next few weeks.

Why is this important?

A local business marketing plan is important because many of you would otherwise march into 2011 without a single strategic weapon in place. Things happen just like you plan them – and if you don’t plan or you plan to fail – you’ll get just that. Local business must PLAN for success – create a road map that will win – not unlike a military going into battle. Yes, sometimes things don’t work out precisely as planned – but at least you have the order of the plan that you can change and aren’t just marching blindly into battle. Your chances of success are increased exponentially with the careful attention to planning that you give – and the success will be sweet at the end when you win – and win big for your local business!

Here’s how this will work:

Some of the content will be available here on the blog. A LOT of it will be in written “lesson” format via our e-mail newsletter. Let’s just say that 2/3 of the content will arrive in your inbox. Once I’ve finished the series, I’ll compile it all into an e-book and teach a webinar on the topic of local business marketing plans around the first week of the year.

The first e-mail lesson will go out next Tuesday, so go ahead and sign-up for the e-mail newsletter now, so you don’t miss a thing. (Motivating hint: the first lesson is something you can accomplish in ten minutes even in the midst of the holiday bustle to position yourself for a successful planning session later when things slow down a bit.)

Sign up in the box on the top right side of the page… just click here… and happy 2011 planning!

Photo Credit: West Point Public Affairs

So you’ve decided to host a holiday event at your locally owned, brick-and-mortar retail or restaurant business. You’ve got a night picked, a theme, and you’re busy planning decorations, entertainment, food… and, of course, plenty of holiday specials to boost those end-of-year sales. You’re on the right path, but the one thing you don’t want to forget is promotion. If you don’t put some time and planning into promoting your big date, you might have a very small turn-out. And after all the work you’re putting in, you want a great response. Here’s how to get one:

First: Identify the specific reasons people will want to come to your holiday event.
You think it’s going to be fun, and you know you want to boost sales. But you can hardly invite the general public – or even your favorite customers – to a special night just to “help boost my sales.” So you need to figure out the appeal for your customers. Is it the great food? The holiday atmosphere? The amazing deals and one-night-only specials? The entertainment? The raffle with over-the-top prizes? The chance to support a charity (here are some ideas in these posts), be part of the community, or get a coupon or freebie by bringing a friend?

Second: Think about all the ways you can communicate with your customers.
Do you have a business website? That’s one way.
How about a business blog? There’s another way. (Here are some business blogging ideas if you need them.)
A Facebook page?
A Twitter account?
An email list?
Those are your online options.
How about the local newspaper? Are there any community or trade magazines? Do you advertise on radio? Do you have a mailing list of customers? An ad in a local newspaper can be relatively inexpensive and can be a great way to promote your event. You might also look into community calendars, both online and in local print publications. Many will put your event on the calendar for free.
You can create a postcard or invitation and mail it out; you can create brochures and hand them out. You can hang signs in the windows of your store.

Don’t forget simple word-of-mouth as well. Have your employees invite every customer who walks in the door. It’s even better if you can hand each customer a paper invitation or flyer, so they can take the information home. Offering a “reward” (such as a special discount, coupon, or freebie) for every friend a customer brings to the event is a great way to increase word-of-mouth.

Third: Partner with other local business owners.
Think about the other businesses in your area. Some may not be set up to adequately host their own holiday event; would they be interested in becoming an event partner? They can help sponsor the event, cut some of your costs, advertise their own products or services, and promote the event to their own customers. Many professionals such as lawyers, CPAs, and consultants, may work from a small office or from their own homes; hosting an event may not be feasible for them, but partnering with you can be a great option. You both benefit from the increased exposure and from the new prospects you will bring to each other.

Fourth: Do something every day to promote the date.
Invest some money in traditional advertising, if you can. Post daily updates and news about your event online. And make a few phone calls, personally inviting people to the event. Five phone calls each day can add up to quite a lot of responses when the event rolls around.

A well-planned, well-promoted, and well-executed holiday event will not only boost your end-of-year sales, it will also leave your customers with a delightful impression of you and your business. You’ll get a chance to mingle with customers new and old, build new relationships, and re-establish old ones. And that kind of investment will carry over well into the year to come.

Image by Smart Destinations.

Tis the season for a holiday marketing strategy. Want to sell more in your retail store or restaurant this year? Try these marketing tips for your holiday sales event, and we bet you’ll sell more stuff!!

Know what people like about the holiday seasons? It gives everyone the excuse to party a little bit more. Holiday events – complete with holiday food – are one of the things people like most about the winter holidays. From Halloween bonfires and chili fests to New Year’s Eve late-night bashes and appetizer buffets, the whole gamut of winter holidays gives us all plenty of opportunities to get together, celebrate, eat, and enjoy the season.

So why not use the natural inclination we all have to mingle and munch? Create a holiday event for your brick-and-mortar local store; invite your customers; promote it publicly; and then be a great host or hostess and watch sales happen.

Keys to a Successful Holiday Event

First, you’ve got to create some holiday spirit.
Don’t try to host a Christmas open house if the only decoration you have is a spindly wreath on the front door. Put up a Christmas tree, hang some lights… you know, deck the halls. Get a selection of Christmas music and make sure it’s playing throughout the party. Make the place smell Christmasy by burning cinnamon-scented candles or having a big bubbling pot of apple cider.

The point to remember is that if you’re going to invite your customers in to celebrate the holidays at your retail store or restaurant, you need to create a holiday-themed, celebratory atmosphere. Go all out.

Second, give people a reason to linger.
Food is a key ingredient in a successful event; have plenty of munchable items and a selection of drinks. Make it easy for people to munch, browse, and talk. Keep trays and drinks refilled.

If you’re hosting a holiday event in your restaurant, your food options increase exponentially. You can host a themed dinner, a dessert party, anything you want because you’re equipped with the kitchen and seating. If you’re a retail shop, set up a food area and a bar, hire a couple of servers, and make the food easy to eat (think finger food) so people won’t struggle with using a fork while balancing a plate and a cup.

Entertainment is always a good option as well. You can have party games, a live band, an old holiday movie showing on a big screen, a raffle, a dance floor, a stage for karaoke. It’s up to you and what will work for your space and resources. People don’t need expensive, fancy entertainment to have a good time.

Third, display your products prominently.
Don’t be shy about what you’re trying to sell. Create holiday specials and make big, beautiful displays to show them off. Make it easy for people to see what you’re offering. You might consider having a raffle or giveaway and let one of your holiday specials be the prize. Offer special, event-only discounts and deals. Go over the specials with all your employees so they can easily show them off to guests.

Use your online presence (website, blog, Facebook, Twitter) to promote your event. If you have an email list, send out a special invitation to your email customers. Put up signs in your store. Put an ad in the local paper. Invite the town and be sure they know what you’re offering: food, drink, entertainment, a fun night out. And, of course, some of the best deals of the holiday season.

Image by ms. Tea.

Evernote is a great technology tool that can be especially helpful with organizing your small business ideas, blog posts, e-mail marketing content, etc. It’s been around a little while, but it’s uses seem to only grow while it gets easier and easier to utilize – so I hope you’ll use it to organize your small business marketing as much I have in mine.

Evernote was built as a multi-purpose, multi-platform tool to help folks save their ideas, photos, and notes in one place and access it from anywhere – and I mean anywhere. Evernote works with nearly every type of computer, phone and mobile device out there (including Android, iPhone, iPads, Mac and PC, etc.)

It’s really easy to use, and most notably, I’ve discovered that it’s made my blogging and business life a lot more organized since I started using it. And that’s why I want to share it with you today.

Small Business Uses for Evernote

I’m always emphasizing that small business owners should create content for the web as much as possible and create it on their own real estate as much as possible – using outposts like Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic back to the mothership, so to speak (YOUR web site, YOUR blog, YOUR e-mail list, etc.). But creating all of that content can sometimes be burdensome. Don’t you hate it when you think of a great idea for a blog post or an e-mail campaign – and you even snap a couple of photos with your mobile phone – only to get busy and forget about the idea or the photo or both until it’s become old news?

Lost opportunities equal lost income in our small business lives, and Evernote is a great solution to help you consolidate all of those ideas into one place, organize them by topic and easily access what you inputted on your phone from any Internet connected computer to be converted into that all-important blog post, web site update or e-mail marketing send.

Here is just one example of how a retail storeowner might use Evernote to make their business blogging easier:

As a retail storeowner, a great blog post idea is to share ideas on HOW to use the products that you sell. Consider a home interiors, gift or decor store seeking to market their products at Christmas. As you decorate the store or re-arrange merchandise, use Evernote to snap a photo of a decorating or gift idea right there in your store, then attach a short note to it explaining the idea and tag it in Evernote as “blog idea, Christmas 2010.” All of this can be done from your smart phone. Maybe later that same day you visit a customer’s home to deliver that fully decorated Christmas tree that they ordered – or you attend a holiday party and notice the decorations are amazing. Snap photos, write a note about how to use YOUR products in this everyday setting and tag them accordingly so you can easily find them later.

Then, when you’re ready to sit down and blog later that night or the next morning, simply login to your Evernote account from your desktop or laptop computer, and you’ll discover all of the photos and notes you made from your phone earlier are ready to access from your computer with blog posts already half-written because you jotted down those simple notes.

Time to Setup YOUR Evernote Account

Now it’s your turn. I’d encourage you to go setup your FREE Evernote account on your computer and go ahead and add the Web Clipperso that you can save ideas easily into Evernote that you find on the Internet. Then add it to your phone, and get started right away collecting marketing content, business ideas, to-do lists, and much, much more. It took me a total of 10 minutes to get all of the Evernote entry points setup on my computer, phone and web browser.

Evernote has great video tutorials, a helpful blog and many other resources available to help you make the most of their really easy-to-use tool – and did I mention that it’s free??

Happy Evernote-ing.

Disclosure: I have not relationship with Evernote and will receive NO financial incentive for writing this post. That means that I really like this tool and am thrilled to share it with you.

I’m always on the lookout for a great new local business marketing partnership idea. Local business marketing is tricky, and I’m convinced that the number one tactic has a lot more to do with working together in business partnerships than working against one another in a competitive stance. With this in mind – and a few other things – I return to the Bathroom Blogfest.

In my first post for this year’s Bathroom Blogfest, I explored an idea for using signage in public bathrooms as a customer experience tool.

There are two items in play in my mind today.

1. I spend a lot of time helping LOCAL businesses connect with customers – I do local business marketing. And ultimately, I want to convince the public to be like me: to choose locally owned businesses – no matter where they are.  For example, if I’m traveling through Mobile, Alabama – I’d rather choose a locally owned place to eat, shop, get my car serviced, etc. Of course, when I’m at home in Jackson, MS, I stick to the locally owned places nearly exclusively.
2. In helping local businesses with their marketing, I spend a lot of time connecting local businesses so they can enjoy the benefits of business partnerships – some folks call them business alliances.

Yep, this applies to bathrooms…

Folks who use public bathrooms don’t usually live around the corner. If they did, they’d just use their own bathroom. The folks using public bathrooms are outsiders to the local area. They are either trade area shoppers or they’re passing through for business or pleasure. Regardless, they’re an opportunity waiting to happen for the local economy.

I say it’s time for local businesses to identify those public restrooms – in convenience stores, hotels, service stations, welcome centers, and the like – and the owners of the same. Then, band together a group of businesses and create a simple way to educate and welcome these passersby – and get them to drop some of their change in your business before they leave.

Maybe it means getting permission to post signage in a bathroom with a Twitter account or text message shortcode that will lead to local offers and invitations. Maybe it’s simply a link to a mobile friendly web site that lists several things that are “can’t miss” before they leave town. Ideally, the information would be fresh, relevant to the time of day, month and current local events. But regardless, I’d like to see local businesses seeking to offer their hospitality in that short moment of private pause. It’s local business marketing that I think might just work magic.

Tricks to success:

1. Simple message – SIMPLE.
2. Multiple simple offers compiled in one place.
3. Technology tie-in that makes it easy to engage.

How to Earn Cooperation for this Business Partnership

In case you’re wondering how to gain cooperation from your newly identified partners-to-be? Well, it’s easy – turn them into customers and partners at the same time. Offer a sampling or regular portion of your goods or services to them in exchange for the advertising space in their bathroom…

Closing Comments

So, I guess this is yet another bathroom signage idea, but if I were the customer, I’d definitely count it as an improved customer experience that the bathroom owner though it was valuable to show me hospitality in his/her community in this way. Of course, the sentiment will fall short if the bathroom is dirty.

Moral of this story: Choose your bathroom business alliances as carefully as you should all the other business partnerships you make.

Editor’s Note

Yes, I’m participating in a blogfest with some other bathroom experience junkies around the country. It’s one week only – but hopefully it’ll get you thinking – and doing something – to improve that all-important potty space in your own business. And even thinking about how you can benefit from such spaces in OTHER businesses. As you ponder these things, be sure to check out what some of the others are writing about, too!

Valerie Fritz from The AwarepointBlog writes about Hospitals, Bathrooms and RTLS: Bathroom Blogfest 2010. Did you know that RTLS prevents hospital patient falls and keeps track of critical equipment – all relating to bathrooms?  Very cool stuff.

Bill Buyok from the Avente Tile Talk Blog came up with nostalgic images capturing Stuck in the 60s? Trends & Changes in Bath Design while also putting the times into perspective.

Becky Carroll from Customers Rock! showcases beautiful bathroom examples she has uncovered in Las Vegas. Her contrasting example makes the point of Bathroom Blogfest 2010 – Stuck in the 60s?

Susan Abbott from Customer Experience Crossroads elevates the bathroom discussion in Bathroom Blogfest 2010: Bathrooms are aspirational.

Nora DePalma from Professor Toilet unearths preposterous advertising and promotional materials in American Standard: The Groovy Years. OMG!

Arpi Nalbandian in the TILE Magazine Editor Blog offers An ode to bathrooms blue and pink, or, real ‘Mad Men’ like pink tile too!

Shannon Bilby for Dolphin Carpet and Tile writes about Creating an Attractive Universal Design Bath.

C.B. Whittemore addresses Toilet Paper, Advertising & Bathroom Blogfest 2010 on Flooring The Consumer and Real-Time Marketing & Bathroom Blogfest 2010 on the Simple Marketing Blog.

Want to know how to make money in the retail business? Doesn’t matter what retail sector you’re in: fashion, spa, shoes, or home decor – even the restaurant business… There’s one simple way to make money.

Here’s the magic formula:

Sell more stuff at better margins.

Are you doing that? Why not? Maybe it’s because a bunch of complications sneaked into your life and your business that are keeping you away from the primary job at hand.

New & Improved Marketing Tools – or New Distractions?

I spent two hours this morning researching new marketing “bells and whistles” that clients had e-mailed me about this morning – mostly so I could explain why they were a bad idea.

They were a bad idea because they are a distraction. They will distract the customer, and they will distract the retail business owner. A few years ago, retailers were easily distracted by the local radio, television and newspaper guy that came knocking and selling the must-have advertising slot in their media.

Today, it’s the folks from Groupon and Living Social, Facebook ads and apps, text message marketing and e-mail gimmicks that don’t even drive traffic to your own web site. There are search engine optimization gurus and Google and YouTube ads and virtual tour creators. And the old fashioned Real Yellow Pages with their new amazing web-based tricks, the newspaper now has added their own set of online offerings and all the old faithful media still call, too…

It’s easy to become distracted by all of the options – and to say yes to the one that sounds the best. The problem with more options is that we get further and further from the purpose of owning a retail business: to sell more stuff at better margins.

Retail marketing should drive SALES – good, solid sales numbers.

Around here, our private clients are posting double digit sales increases across the board. No exceptions. And they’re following a simple system that builds long-term valuable customer relationships (and retail sales) and teaches customers how to most effectively share their experience with their friends. Sure, we’re using “new technology tools” – but we’re using them in a simple and effective way that produces sales and long-term customer relationships. We’re using simple systems that keep us on track – on the sales track.

Let your competitors follow the gimmicks.

Be okay with that. Then laugh all the way to the bank while you keep it simple. It’s cliche – but “keep is simple stupid” is still a sound business strategy for your retail business. Sell more stuff at better margins. Go do it.

What’s Your Excuse?

One of the most common complaints (excuses?) given for not engaging in online marketing and social media is that there are simply too many options and, to put it simply, business owners are afraid to pick one and go with it. They don’t always come out and say that – we don’t usually like admitting we’re overwhelmed and scared – but that’s the heart of it.

You might have said it yourself, maybe a line like one of these:

I’m too busy to figure this online thing out.

There are too many options and I don’t want to invest in the wrong one.

I’m too old for this stuff.

It’s too complicated.

There’s no way to measure ROI.

I’m just going to focus on offline marketing for now.

Maybe next year, when things calm down…

Any of those sound familiar?

The Great Big Secret of Online Success

Well, if any of those ring a bell, this post is for you. We’re here with the one secret you need for online success. Are you ready?

Do something.

Yes, that’s it. Really. Sorry, we know, it’s kind of disappointing that it’s so simple. But the secret is simple; doing nothing will get you nowhere. Pick one online option and go for it. Really put some effort into it, whether it’s your business website or a business blog or a Facebook page. Work at it for 15 to 30 minutes daily and you will see an enormous impact. And while you’re working at it – even just for 15 minutes at a time – you’ll learn everything you need to know. You’ll see that in the online world, just like the offline world, truly successful marketing is about connecting with people. Social media, blogs, and websites are just new ways to connect, and for many local businesses, they are less expensive and easier to manage.

You just have to put your fears aside, jump in, and take action.

Remember, the longer you hesitate, the more time you waste. Get your feet wet. Take a step. Take another step. Start moving forward. Making progress is not as difficult as you think; you just have to pick a direction and start moving forward.

Ready? Let’s go.

Photo credit: andreskrey