Marketing Advice By Business Type
Marketing a Shoe Shining Business
A profitable shoe shining business is about more than supply and demand. It's about designing ways to entice new customers to engage with your products and to encourage existing customers to increase the frequency of their purchases.
Marketing is the bridge between an organization and its customer base. Build your bridge poorly and you'll quickly find your shoe shining business cut off from the marketplace.
Great marketing translates into higher visibility and a larger customer base. But in a zero-sum economy, there are winners and losers -- and here are some of the things that will help keep your shoe shining business at the top of the heap.
Multichannel Marketing Strategies
Multichannel is an important buzzword in today's marketing circles. Today's consumers engage with brands in diverse ways. That means brands need to demonstrate similar diversity in the channels they employ to connect with customers.
In today's marketplace, it simply isn't possible for shoe shining businesses that funnel the bulk of their resources toward a single marketing channel to maintain a noticeable presence in the marketplace. So when you create your marketing strategy, you'll need to consider including print ads, flyers, and even online marketing tactics in the mix. The acquisition of reliable mailing lists from proven providers can expedite the transition, but ultimately your efforts to go multichannel may require the assistance of a marketing professional.
Marketing Consultants
As a small business owner, it's tempting to think that you have what it takes to market your brand effectively. Maybe you do. But in our experience, there is no substitute for enlisting the services of a qualified marketing consultant. By hiring a consultant or marketing firm, you will improve your shoe shining business' most important brand characteristics. More importantly, it will provide the expertise you need to identify the most productive marketing channels and raise your brand profile within the industry. With technology playing a greater role in the shoe shining business arena, exposing your strategy to the influence of capable marketing professional should be a top priority.
Social Media Monitoring
The use of social media as a marketing tool is the latest wave to overtake the small business community. Combined with a functional company website, social media attracts new customers and converts them to brand advocates. Social media can quickly go negative, turning brand advocacy into "badvocacy", a scenario in which consumers and users create content deriding your company and your products. All shoe shining businesses have too much at stake to ignore derogatory social media mentions. To counter negative social media, you'll need to monitor your brand's online presence and enter the conversation, redirecting negative discussions toward more positive topics.
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