This article outlines some simple strategies for generating more sales in your local neighbourhood.
Neighbourhood Marketing: the big idea - think small
Neighbourhood marketing means focusing your marketing efforts on those neighbourhoods no more than a 5 - 10 minute drive from your business location.
Neighbourhood marketing is marketing at a local level. In essence, it means reaching out to new prospects in specific neighbourhoods within your catchment area: providing both incentives and triggers to stimulate interest in your business. It means bringing your message down to street level, and targeting only those people most likely to be future customers.
Neighbourhood marketing requires you to do some basic research to identify the discrete neighbourhoods within your catchment area. Most communities have a continuum of "wealthy" "moderate means" and "less well off" neighbourhoods within their boundaries.
Ask yourself two simple questions:
1) What sort of people buy my product, or service?
2) What sort of neighbourhood are potential customers most likely to live in?
Even elementary research like this will provide a base from which to build quite sophisticated targeting lists for local marketing campaigns.
Within the broad categories of "wealthy" "moderate means" and "less well off" there is the opportunity to subdivide the categories further, for example, take the most wealthy sector, and list the ten most exclusive streets within it; individual house numbers, or house names can be easily found by doing a neighbourhood walk, or sourcing the information from a postcode directory - you then have a short-list of the most exclusive homes in the area; a good target base for the promotion of luxury products and specialist services.
On the other side of the tracks, "less well off" neighbourhoods containing local authority housing, small private flats in converted terraces, and housing association properties might prove a fertile marketing ground to promote low-cost mortgages under the right-to-buy scheme, or a range of low-cost financial services.
Intermediate status neighbourhoods can be receptive to both high and low value products and services. So, segmenting your market as accurately as possible makes sense; it's the key to more accurate and profitable sales, and lead generation opportunities. Consider the varying features of different neighbourhoods as a basis to understanding where new customers can be found.
One of the advantages of carrying out your own close neighbourhood marketing campaign is that you have a lot more control over the campaign itself, compared for example, to placing an ad in the local paper. Let me give an example of what I mean by control. A local neighbourhood restaurant is quiet on a Wednesday night. To generate custom the proprietor puts an ad in the local paper: a two-for-one promotion on a Wednesday night.
But, the paper is distributed throughout a large geographical area that has thousands of households; the result is that far too many readers take up the offer; consequently, although more custom is generated from the ad, nearly half the customers in the restaurant on Wednesday night are not paying for a meal. Moreover, because some of the patrons have had to travel several miles to reach the restaurant it’s less likely they will return when they have to pay the full cost. The control and targeting elements have been completely lost.
A better strategy would have been to select a neighbourhood close by, and do a door-to-door campaign with an attractive invitation card delivered to the letterboxes of selected households inviting them to participate in the promotion. If you aim for a 2 - 3% response from your campaign you can estimate the number who will take up the offer, giving you a measure of control and targeting totally lacking in the local paper ad.
Because you are operating in your own local area, it might be possible for you to provide a first-rate local incentive that a big outside competitor could not match. So, provide a key benefit to local customers for using your product or service. Make it the best you can. Make it available only within your neighbourhood to those who can have the greatest impact on your business.
Give this proposition some serious thought. By making it available only in a limited geographical area, to a selected number, it becomes less costly for you to provide, while at the same time being perceived by the customer as an exclusive, tangible benefit. This will again enhance your business reputation in your area.
Tap into the potential market right on your doorstep. Other businesses in your area will have employees who not only work in the area, but also do their shopping locally.
By contacting other local business owners and providing them with free incentives for their employees' you achieve the twin aims of expanding your customer base, while gaining the good will of fellow business owners in the area. After all, what employer would not want to reward their hard-working, loyal staff? And especially, if the cost to them was zero, a win-win situation for both businesses.
The key of course is providing a good incentive: this does not mean the incentive has to carry a high monetary value. Depending on the nature of your business it might be possible to do free delivery, home visits, or provide lunch-time appointments etc, try to think of an incentive that provides a real benefit one that: adds value, saves time, is more convenient, less stressful.
If you want to grab your share of sales and cash circulating in the local economy make neighbourhood marketing concepts work for you. Think on a small scale about how you can reach the customer right on your own doorstep.
Tabtex Technical & Business Text
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