Please, Steal our Customers!

28. Jan, 2010 0 Comments

Are you telling your competition to ‘Please, Steal our Customers?”

Savvy entrepreneurs are always looking for new ways to reach and communicate better with their potential customers. However, it’s very easy to sit back. While that happens though, someone else is very likely to be trying to find ways to reach your current, former and potential customers.

Yesterday I wrote about how important it is for marketing consultants to claim their stake in the modern day landrush of helping locally owned and operated businesses transition from old media to new media. However, on the same front, it’s just as urgent for businesses to claim their stake in new media and work towards reaching the ever-growing number of consumers that now rely on the Internet for the information they need to live out their daily lives.

Every single day that your business is not reaching those consumers, some other business is likely doing so. Some of these are national operations that then turn around and sell you your own local customer lead.

Others are simply choosing to buy from faceless corporations simply because a local option was not available to them in their initial online search. Here is what I mean.

I was recently reading an excerpt of what was said in an eMarketer interview with Fiona Dias, an executive vice president of partner strategy and marketing at GSI Commerce, which runs the Websites of large retailers. In the interview, Fiona Dias admonished multichannel retailers for being slow to use their inherent strengths to prevent Amazon and other pure plays from taking market share. Here is a passage from that interview:

Shame on us. As a retail community, we have allowed Amazon to grow to be a $22 billion company. We have allowed it to happen because we haven’t leveraged our biggest assets, which are our stores and our people. We have things that Amazon doesn’t have.

A weapon against Amazon is multichannel because consumers love being able to get their product immediately. They love being able to touch, feel and see it. They love being able to return it easily to stores. There are a lot of things that consumers love about the multichannel experience. For the retailers that have done it, it’s paid off big time for them.

For the retailers who are asleep and ignoring this, they’re basically saying to Amazon, “Please take our business because we’re not going to leverage our assets and you’re welcome to steal our customers.”

So you may be asking. What is multichannel?

In this case, Dias is referring to the ability to allow consumers to find, read, write, share, and interact with you through a variety of media, and then purchase locally where they can see, feel, touch and return products conveniently if needed. This is why 62% of local searchers will search online in order to find a locally available product or service and then purchase it locally.

Are you going to advertise to bring in those people, or are you going to allow someone else to steal your customers? If large retailers are realizing this. How long will you wait before you take action?

Instead, take action now and then use LOCAL as your advantage. Your ability to provide locally available products and services, and most importantly, provide customer service for these things, is your edge!

Target local search keywords. Target local users on Facebook, Linked In and Twitter. Target these people and let them be a part of your conversation. Let them be a part of your business and then watch how they spread the stories of their favorite food, drinks, dentists, plumbers, savings, discounts, coupons, events and so much more.

Leverage your strengths within this new media as you would leverage your strengths in any other competition. Because now… you’re competing with local, national and international players for consumers who live just 2 blocks from your location.

In most cases they’d rather do business with you. Leverage that and be found where they are looking. Be active where they are seeking activity, and be a part of their conversation.

- Tony Darrick Baker