Small Business Marketing Real-Life Applications

3. Customer feedback

One of the most essential research tools for a small business marketing strategy is…our ears. Listening to consumers is one of the best ways to get information on what drives them, about what they like and don’t like, what’s important to them, etc. A third thing I would do is send surveys to customers to get their feedback.

That said, don’t annoy people by sending a constant flurry of surveys, but there are four easy and highly effective things you can do:

• Send surveys to a partial base, not the whole base, and rotate them so perhaps 25 percent of your database gets a survey on week 1, another 25 percent on week 2, etc. By doing so, no one gets a survey more than once a month
• Change the survey constantly so survey No. 1 is about service, survey No. 2 is about fashion trends and so on. When doing this, you can collect enough information for it to be meaningful and collect it quickly enough for it to be helpful
•  Maintain some common questions throughout the surveys, such as age, zip code, gender and media-exposure questions. With time, the aggregate of the surveys will give you a statistical base that’s highly robust and can help you choose the marketing media that works best for you
• Offer a discount with every survey (a carrot works so much better than a stick)

 

Thinking Beyond Your Means

Surprisingly, Emporium is already doing many things right:

1. It has an easy-to-navigate website. I don’t think much of the color scheme, but that’s highly subjective, of course. One key drawback, however, is that there’s no “catalog,” or a place where you can see the clothing the store carries, what’s new in the store, etc.

2. It has good marketing instruments on its site:

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  • Sign-ups for news and sales
  • Social-media icons
  • Pinterest and Instagram profiles and boards
  • Miami New Times “reader’s choice award,” which is meaningful for the store’s clientele
  • Phone and email contact informat

   

 

3.The site includes videos:

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    • Cool idea: Little self-help videos on funky fashion themes.
    • Better idea: Create a related YouTube channel and link your website from there
    • Superb idea: There are many videos in YouTube mentioning “emporium,” although not all of them are from the same store. However, if there are any, one can create a section that includes them on the website

     

   

 

4. It multi-purposes its PR:

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      • Ocean Drive Magazine is one the best-known Miami fashion/lifestyle magazines and definitely the most prestigious one. Not only did Emporium show up in Ocean Drive (most likely by paying for the placement) but it effectively markets the appearance on its website

       

     

   

 

Overall, Emporium provides a good example of “nano-marketing,” or how a tiny business has managed to employ a multitude of marketing tools to grow.

Bottom Line

Small business marketing for owners seem to have a limitless supply of reasons why “this” won’t work or “that” won’t work. Nevertheless, small businesses have a number of proven marketing resources at their disposal—and they don’t need to break the bank to use them. They only need to break their mindsets.

Other articles by Marcelo:

Is Social Media Good For Business?

The Washington Post Morphs To The Amazon Post?

Social Media Lessons Learned From MTV

A Messaging Strategy To Reach 3 Consumer States

Advertising? Why Three Creative Executions Are Essential

It’s All About Persuasion, Isn’t It?