More and more brick-and-mortar business owners are starting to see that social networking helps business: it increases your public profile, helps you create a recognizable brand, and helps you reach people you might not otherwise reach.

But what about the benefits of social networking for reaching out locally? Can you use social networking not to “expand” into a new target market but to get more business from where you already are?

In short, absolutely. Social networking can become a huge boost and help you increase local business. Here’s how to go about it:

Create a Local Presence Online
Maybe you have a website or business blog, or you’re building up your Facebook business page and learning your way around Twitter. Use your time online to create more contact with other local folks. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Get your profile on geo-social sites like Foursquare and Facebook Places.

These social sites are places that map local areas and then allow users to interact with those local places online. Create an account, and then claim your local business on the map; you’ll go through a brief confirmation procedure, and then you can start interacting with users on the social site. (Look for more on this in an upcoming post. We’ll walk you through it step-by-step.)

2. Find local groups and local business pages on Facebook and get involved with them.

Use Facebook’s search tool to find groups and pages from your area, then join the groups and become a fan of the pages. Interact; respond to posts, ask questions, answer questions, be friendly, and contribute. All you’re doing is expanding your local presence from the street front and physical community to the virtual street front and online community.

3. Connect with local news and review sites.

There are some national websites, such as Examiner.com, Citysearch.com, and Yelp.com, which have local branches. Browse through these and you’ll find reviews of area restaurants, articles on local events, and more. Get in touch with the news writers and offer an interview or story idea relating to your business; most of the time these folks are looking for good material, so they’ll jump on your offer. For the review sites, make sure your business is on the site, then respond to good reviews with thank you and any negative comments with an offer to help and resolve the problem. No feedback from you will come across as negative, so be proactive here.

Promote Your Social Networking Offline
Once you’ve got a Facebook page, website, blog, or other networking method in place, start telling people about it! Put a link on your business cards. Create and print a simple flyer telling people to find you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. Put a sign in the window, a sign on your bulletin board, a link on your email signature, and a reference on any other material that goes out of your business.Local folks will not just automatically find you online; you have to tell them. And sometimes you have to tell them a few times so, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Use Social Networking to Promote Your Local Community
Now that you’ve established a local presence online and started getting local people to connect with you online, it’s time to leverage all that work into more local business. Do this by using your social network and online storefront to promote local events and provide special locally based offers. Sponsor the next charity 5K run and talk about it online. Put a local community calendar on your website. Put an events tab on your Facebook page and highlight local events as well as events as your own business.

What you’re doing is becoming a local resource, both online and offline. Expand your local value by offering special discounts, deals, and coupons to local folks but do it online. Send a special message to your Facebook followers, an email to your subscribers, or tweet out a message offering 1/2 off an item for the next 24 hours. Make your discounts significant and time-limited and offer them frequently; this motivates your local fans to follow you online so they don’t miss a special deal, and it also motivates them to share your great deal with other local folks.

The key in this strategy is to keep the focus on the local folks. What gets them excited and makes them want to come back? Figure out what that is, translate it into something you can offer or talk about online, and you’ve found the key to leverage social networking for more local business.

Photo Credit: philcampbell

Introducing my very old fashioned (using e-mail technology) “thank & recommend” strategy for building customer loyalty, customer visit frequency and improving retail or restaurant sales.

This system will help you lock in customers for life and earn business in the short term.

Before we get much further, please know that I get that life is busy and that there are lots of technical system (called trigger e-mail marketing) that do this in a more systematic way. But I want to encourage you that if things are at all sluggish in your business that you dedicate to working this system until things get better. Then, once they are better, set the calendar on autopilot naming days or weeks on a regular basis when you do it again for a short period to keep things flowing and extend your attitude of gratitude back to your customers (for example, once things are great again, pick the slowest night of the week for your restaurant or retail store – or choose to do this on the 2nd week of every month for five days, etc.). Customer loyalty, visit frequency and sales volume will improve.

Here’s the three step “thank and recommend” customer loyalty builder system:

1. Post lots of current products or menu items in an online photo album that is public. Post them on blog posts on your blog, Facebook photo albums, Flickr, or even Picasa.

2. Dedicate that every day for one week employees are required to take note (either using the technology tools of the point of sale system or old fashioned note-taking) of each customers e-mail address and what they bought.

3. At the end of each day, you, your employee or wait staff, should pen a short customized e-mail based on a standard system that will make it quick and easy… Here’s a template that you can follow to make the e-mails quick and easy to write.

Dear (insert first name of customer or Mr/Mrs/Ms Last name) -

I wanted to personally thank you for visiting us today at (insert name of business). Your support of our locally owned business really means a lot to us.

As I recall, you (choose purchased/enjoyed/ordered/took home) the (insert name of what they purchased).

Since you left, I’ve been thinking that you might also really like (insert name of three other potential products that are linked to their photo online). I included links to them here, but you can also check them out the next time you come in – which I hope is soon!

If you see something you’d like immediately, just hit reply, and I can answer any questions you might have or take care of your order over the phone tomorrow.

But don’t be a stranger – we always enjoy seeing you!

Thanks again for your business,

(insert your name)

P.S. In case you haven’t already, you can connect with us on Facebook at (insert direct link) and follow us on Twitter (insert direct link) for more ideas just like these. Thanks again!

Now – go get some sales and share your feedback in our comments below!

Photo Credit: a.drian

It’s a proven fact: Great retail and restaurant displays SELL MORE STUFF! We’ve talked about how to create great displays before and we always love window designer Amy Meadows ideas that she shares with us.

This week, we especially love the displays at Charlotte Skelton’s latest small business venture, CRAVE, in Cleveland, Mississippi. Talk about packing a punch of delicious color, enticing presentation and straightforward customer education and alluring sales messages… CRAVE’s great displays make you, well, crave their goodies.

CRAVE is a small coffeeshop and café in a converted convenience store on the main drag in small town Cleveland, Mississippi. The owner is a veteran of the local food scene, but this time she’s pulled out a few new tricks…

Let’s analyze the visuals of this small biz:

1. Upon entry into the coffee shop, you are welcomed with a bold punch of name branding, brilliant colored candy jar displays as a focal point and a black board that gives you the must-know details of the day and some sales offers. Creative – but I’m guessing it wasn’t that expensive to create, making this display idea easily modified for your own purposes.

2. Point of sale. Well, let’s just say that having a mass display of amazing looking cupcakes, brilliantly elevated on multiple cake plates, creatively labeled with handwritten cards all behind a pristine glass case makes it difficult to resist taking 1 or a dozen of these goodies home for later enjoyment. The allure of this “bonus” item probably adds many dollars to her average ticket, an improvement that can pay big dividends on your small business’ annual bottom line.

What can we learn from CRAVE?

1. Educate your customers from the moment they walk in the front door. Never assume they know what to do with your products – even if your products are as simple as cupcakes and coffee!

2. Grab customers’ attention right from the start. Have a wow factor and focal point to your store displays, especially at the entry area.

3. Look for ways to use alluring visual elements to inspire the up-sell at the point of sale and increase your average sale / transaction amount.

4. Creative doesn’t mean expensive. Look for ways to repurpose ordinary objects and low-cost display elements like brightly colored candy, black boards, scrap fabric and ribbons, and old furniture to add new life to your displays.

P.S. We wish CRAVE had a web site and Facebook presence – but they don’t. We highly recommend that pack their bold punch online as well in the very near future!!

Many times our restaurants and small business clients will talk about how they “killed it” with Twitter marketing. Why does it work so well for some, and abysmally for others? Well, I firmly believe that it’s this little thing we call strategy.

So here’s a little strategy for you – a great tip to add some pizzazz to your Twitter contests. Instead of having a contest where there is a simple “answer the question and win” as your most advanced Twitter marketing plan, try mixing it up using a hashtag (that’s a way to track a trend or topic by posting the # sign and a name – like #RRTV in every post) or having them win if they can retweet your message AND get their own tweet re-tweeted.

The re-tweeting angle gives you a larger reach with your audience. Have a short message ready for them to retweet. Or create a business hashtag and use it to lengthen your marketing message.

This is just one simple tip to add a little pizzazz to your Twitter marketing and contest efforts.

Sometimes a project comes along that just warms the soul. Not long ago, Andy and I helped the new owner of a historic soda fountain as he sought to share the nostalgia and heritage of this landmark with a new generation – using New Media and Social Media tools. Recently, when meeting with the new owner, I found myself saying something that I say a lot:

“Customers are more loyal when they feel like an insider, and prospects are more likely to convert when they have ‘insider’ information.”

Similarly, several times a week, without fail, folks ask us about our lives… Usually the question goes something like this: “It seems like you are on the road ALL THE TIME… HOW do you do it?” Or, “How do you have time to do all of this?”

Really, the bottom line is that folks want insider information – they want a peak behind the scenes. And your customers want the same from you. As strange as it may seem, in this age of reality shows and YouTube (check out our channel), people really do care what happens behind the scenes at your business. I don’t think I’m that interesting, but who am I to tell you how to feel or what to be interested in? Or maybe, if you’re like me, it’s so refreshing to know that other people think or feel like I do. I believe “Insider Information” is a “needle-mover” when it comes to customer loyalty, word of mouth marketing and long-term success.

What are YOU doing to make your customers and prospects feel like “Insiders?” (Yep, go ahead, and leave a comment below. Seriously.)

In follow-up to the original version of this post, I got a note from friend and business owner Mandy Becker. I asked her permission to share her comments with you because I thought her feedback was so apt – it reinforces the message. Here’s what Mandy had to say:

I loved this!  I totally think the insider info think is critical!  The last three times I went to market, I wrote a blog about what it was like, what I was buying, etc. My customers loved it! They felt like they were part of the action! I have heard so many times, “Oh, I wish I owned a gift shop – what’s it really like? Do you love it?  What’s a typical day.” It is amazing how much people care about one another’s lives; I think we live vicariously through others in some way. Anyway – thank you!

P.S. I think I might even do a weekly blog post called “Insider Information.” Thanks for the idea – I hope it is okay if I use it?

How to make YOUR customers feel like insiders.

Where are the points in your customer experience that make a new customer feel awkward or out of the loop? Do some customers walk into your restaurant  or small business and know exactly what to do, what to expect, how to respond? Or do they struggle through certain points of the experience – or even getting in the door in the first place! Learn from your regulars – and find ways to make new customers feel equally comfortable. Sales and tips will increase accordingly.

Small business owners can learn about the key elements of a successful e-mail marketing campaign from local restaurateur Jeff Good at a free event next Tuesday, March 9, 2010.

Good will be the featured small business owner on ResultsRevTV; the show will be webcast before a live audience from the LemuriaBooks.com building in Jackson, Miss. The event is free and open to the public thanks to a sponsorship from Beck Photographic. Local small business owners are encouraged to attend.

As co-owner of three popular restaurants and a catering company in Jackson, Miss., Jeff Good uses e-mail marketing tools on a weekly basis to promote events, educate customers, and motivate support for community causes. At this informative event, Good will reveal how he personally manages his extensive e-mail marketing efforts, why e-mail is a pillar of his marketing program, and what tools he uses to help him in his e-mailing efforts.

This event is the second in a series of weekly webcasts of ResultsRevTV and part of the Results Revolution (www.resultsrevolution.com). ResultsRevTV is the show where small business owners learn how to grow their businesses through smarter marketing. Each week, attendees will learn from the experience of a successful small business owner. The event will include live question and answer time as well as door prizes and a special gift for local attendees.

In the Jackson, MS area, bring your lunch and join us live at Noon in the LemuriaBooks.com Building (adjacent to Banner Hall on I-55 North between Northside & Meadowbrook). Wherever you are, you may join us live on the web at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/resultsrev.

The Results Revolution is a nationwide initiative seeking to create strong economies through locally owned and operated small businesses. The Results Revolution encourages consumers to shop locally, equips small businesses to do effective marketing, and facilitates networking among the business community. The Results Revolution was founded as a free resource for small business owners by Jackson area marketing consultants, Marianna and Andy Chapman.