I loved this restaurant marketing idea from the Texas Downtown Association: Collaborative Marketing for Local Restaurants In order to compete with new chain restaurants, a group of Longview restaurateurs decided to band together to form a local marketing collective to help encourage people to “Chews Longview”. The marketing campaign urges people to support local…
For years, we’ve all worked on SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to get our names out there and associated with specific words and phrases we knew our customers would type into a search engine to find us. Now that customers are saying their searches out loud, how does that change things? Today’s voice searches…
“This product is great! It will save your marriage, improve your bank account and make you slimmer!” OK, enough with the benefits overload! I can’t believe your benefits claims because you didn’t show me why they’re believable. Sales pages online are drowning in benefits, but without any hint that they connect to an actual…
When you hold events downtown, the businesses that aren’t located downtown sometimes feel left out. There’s one bank not in downtown, that figured out a great way to participate in the First Thursday fun in downtown Colfax, Washington. They could have done what other groups are doing and set up a booth on the…
Let’s look at the tale of two small town concerts. Concert 1: We’ve done all the work, you just need to show up! One happened at an agritourism business. They brought in a couple of professional musicians for performances out at the farm. The musicians were reasonably well known, with some previous exposure on…
Empty space is an enemy of small town retail stores. Empty shelves and empty space make customers think you don’t have much to sell. They already think you don’t have much because that’s the stereotype of small town stores. You can combat this perception easily: fill all empty space, floor to ceiling. Secret: You…
Being open later hours in the evenings is hard for a lot of small businesses, but we have an easy promotion for you to make more sales later in the day. Reach out to your existing customers, and let them know you have a new service: Call ahead, and we’ll have it ready for…
While today’s business owners need to market online, they shouldn’t ignore traditional marketing methods. The reality is that an effective marketing campaign uses the tool that best reaches the target market. For many businesses owners, especially those in rural communities, that tool continues to be one of the traditional marketing venues. An example of such…
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