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Getting more customers through the doors

AGoodBookAGoodBook subscriber Posts: 1
edited October 2006 in Marketing
I recently opened a bookstore 7 months ago in a great location by using my personal savings. My greatest challenge is continously getting customers through the doors and getting customers to purchase books through my website. I would love to find out from other forum members in retail what they have done to get continuos business in-store and online.

Comments

  • davennydavenny subscriber Posts: 2
    Have you read "Your Marketing Sucks" and The Art of ProfitablityThese books deal a lot with retail stores and their marketing.  The Art of Profitablity goes through a detailed example about small local book selling store and how they had greatly increased their sales with minium additional costs.So...these books will help you way more then what I could say here on the forum but I want you to know that if you store doesn`t have a myspace page make one for it.I`ll give you an example of how powerful this can be...I live in seattle and enjoy comedy so I have local comics and some local comedy clubs as my "friends" on my myspace page.  The local comedy club posted a "bulletin" that they were having try out on Sunday afternoon.  Bulletin go out to everyone in your friends list on myspace, but your friends like to see bulletin and whats going on...it not like spam...so because of this bulletin I ended up going and enjoyed seeing some new comics....I dont do stand up just incase you were wondering.So you can easily build up the number of friends you have on your myspace and then notify everyone of local author new releases, specials, guest speakers etc. and these people will love being your "friend"Ps I have also always thought that a book store should come up with some club..calling it like "the die hard book army" or something like that and give there members dog tags...maybe its a guy thing.Anyways, good luck! I hope you have great success.
  • AGoodBookAGoodBook subscriber Posts: 1
    Hostclick, thank you so much for the wonderful advice abour the website as well as mybrick and mortar store. I am looking into Yahoo and adclick now. Thanks
  • AGoodBookAGoodBook subscriber Posts: 1
    Davenny, I will make sure I get both of these books. Thanks for the help.
  • AGoodBookAGoodBook subscriber Posts: 1
    CraigL, People come through the doors, I just want to get more customers consistently. Thanks for your thoughts. AGoodBook2006-10-26 15:1:58
  • InactiveMemberInactiveMember subscriber Posts: 12
    Getting customers through the doors and in front of your cash register. Seems simple enough. As with most of my posts, I advocate simplicity and a focus on the fundamentals. Start with your current situation of X customers per day and daily receipts of Y. Those are two very important numbers. Decide how much you want to increase X and watch how much your Y increases along with X. This will give you some idea of the kind of traffic you need to reach your goal for Y.
    What can you do to attract people to your store? This is very difficult since I cannot see your location and I have no idea about the business environment. Are there complementary businesses? Could you arrange a promotion with a coffee shop nearby? You could print some coupons with a small discount and tell your customers to hand them out to their friends. When the friend shows up to shop, give them a coupon. In addition, what are you doing to differentiate your shop? It`s important. People shop at a small bookstore for different reasons than they shop at a large bookstore.
    I confess a lack of experience with retail fundamentals, but I think you might examine how and why Target differentiates itself from Wal-Mart. What comes to mind when you think about Target? What comes to mind when you think about Wal-Mart? Both are extremely successful in a cutthroat business. How can Target successfully compete with Wal-Mart, when Wal-Mart has 10x the annual revenue and is an utter monster, competition-wise?
    The answer? Target is very well differentiated. Its market position is very clear. If you want to buy nice things in clean, well-managed stores, you shop at Target. If you want to buy cheap things in dirty, poorly-managed stores, you shop at Wal-Mart. This isn`t a dig against Wal-Mart. To the contrary, their clientele identifies with their market position as blue collar, no frills, etc. At least, that`s what their numbers show. At any rate, the idea here is that you need to develop a unique market position.
    Check out Michael Porter`s five forces model. It`s often extremely useful for positioning work. Also check out perceptual mapping.CookieMonster2006-10-26 19:58:51
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