If you are a new business or a struggling business promotion is one of the best marketing tools to move your business towards success. Like most techniques I write about on this site your promotion must do two things. One, it must be profitable. It has to produce more in customers profits to the business than the promotion costs. Two, it must be cost effective. You need to attract the largest amount of potential customers at the lowest possible price.
Small Town Promotion ProblemsWhen is comes to promotion, small towns present some problems not found in larger cities. The biggest hurdle to overcome is the demographic numbers. The smaller the town the more it costs (per customer) to attract that customer. For example, in New York city there are 27,000 people per square mile. In Montana, (my home state) there are five people per square mile. In New York, a sign and a few balloons may attract enough street traffic to make the promotion successful.
But in a small town you may not get that much walk by traffic. So you may have to advertise your promotion in several community newspapers and radio stations to attract the same traffic. What happens is the very thing that you don't want to happen. Your promotion costs more than it produces. And if that's the case you shouldn't do it.
Overcoming Small Town Promotion ProblemsThe way to overcome the problems sited above is to deal with them as you would any business problem. Create a plan with goals that are realistic. For example, if you are a new business your goal may be to finish your first month with x amount of sales. Once you have the objective established then you need to ask yourself some questions. How can I bring enough customers to my business to achieve this goal? What costs are involved? When should I plan this promotion?
The time of the promotion can be very critical for some small towns. For example, if you have an industry in town that employees a lot of the towns population, when are their paydays? If it's rural with a lot of agriculture when are those people going to have money? At the beginning of planting season or at the end?
Once you have established some objectives there is another important question you must ask yourself. What types of promotions should I use? Here are a few of my favorites. You can pick one or combine one or more depending on your business.
SamplingStop in any grocery store in a large city and you will find people giving away free samples at the end of almost every aisle in the store. You don't find much of this in small town grocery stores. This technique is especially effective for small and home based businesses.
There is a low cost way to sample and a high cost way to sample. The low cost way is to distribute coupons good for a free sample either door to door or by direct mail. This way you get less people but the ones you do get are probably more interested in your product. The other advantage of this method is that the customer comes to your place of business to redeem the coupon. This gives you an opportunity to expose the customer to other products and services that you offer.
The high cost way is to have free samples available at high traffic areas of town. For example a new barbecue rib restaurant here in town set up a stand at the county fair and gave free samples of their barbecued ribs for the seven days of the fair. A new A&W root beer stand here had an open house for members of the Chamber of Commerce and gave away free meals for the opening.
You may want to create a list of people in the community who you especially want to know about your products. These are people who are active in the community and will help spread the word about you in their circle of friends.
The hardest part of sampling is judging how effective it is. You give away a sample and it may be weeks or months before that customer ends up using your product.
Incentives To Buy Your ProductThe sale is probably the oldest form of promotion ever. The customer can see a perceived value. Buying something for less is a powerful incentive to make the purchase. For most of the twentieth century, stores had January "white sales." Sheets and blankets and the like. Consumers would wait for these sales and it was a great way for stores to sell various patterns that they were no longer going to carry in inventory.
I spent a couple of years working with Circuit City Stores®. The are the largest electronic retailer in the United States. Every Thursday they started a sale that ended on Sunday. There were "loss leaders" in every department. Low cost VCR's TV's washing machines, stereos and computers. This form of marketing is extremely successful for the large city but I wouldn't recommend it for the small town.
In small towns, sales need to be special events. They need to have more substance than big city sales. Here's the problem. Because of the smaller population base sales figures are smaller. A sale will dilute your profit margin on each item sold. You may do a large volume but make a relatively small profit. In a large city you can do enough volume to offset some of this (the Circuit City philosophy) but in a small town it's much more difficult. In a small town quarter or semi-annual sales are probably better.
Creating your own newsletterA newsletter can be a valuable source of information for your customers or it can be a serious waste of money and paper. The problem with a newsletter for most business owners is finding the time to create it. Usually it's farmed out to some desktop publishing design person who puts it all together or some reluctant internal company volunteer.
If you decide to go the newsletter route as one of your promotional methods here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
- The content must be interesting and informative to your customers.
- There must be some value to the customer. (Coupons, private sales or offers not available to the general public) There should be a reason to open it and read it.
- It should encourage the customer to contact your business on some kind of regular basis.
- It should not be wall-to-wall print. It should be inviting to read. Use pictures and illustrations where ever possible and lots of white space. A type size of 12pt to 14pt type will be easier for most middle aged and older customers to read.
- Write in conversational style - As though you were talking to the customer one-on-one. The customer should feel the newsletter was written specifically for them.
If you have the time or expertise to produce it a newsletter can be a great promotional tool and is relatively inexpensive.
Promoting Your Business With Circulars, Flyers and BrochuresEvery business needs a tool that talks about the business when you aren't there to do it. That tool is usually the brochure. This tool will explain to current and potential customers what your business is all about and how your products or services can benefit them. Before you design your own brochure; See: How To Design And Write A Basic Brochure
Flyers and circulars have a slightly different purpose. They are usually used to highlight something special happening at your business. It might be a sale, announcement of new products or services or some other important information about your company. Flyers and circulars are usually placed in non-competitive businesses where customers can pick them up. Caution: If they are time sensitive make sure you pick up any surpluses that may be outdated.
They can also be placed on bulletin boards in laundromats, office buildings, grocery stores and at your local Chamber of Commerce (if you are a member which you should be).
Promotional Seminars and ClassesOne of the way I promote my business is by giving seminars and teaching adult education classes. People want information. They want to be informed buyers. No matter what type of business you have there is a seminar in it somewhere. How to do this.. How to do that...
I like Adult Education because, not only do they cover all expenses of the class including advertsing, but they also pay me to give the class. I don't have to worry about enough people showing up to cover the expense of the hotel meeting room. I can give potential customers valuable information and promote my business at the same time.
The Last Word On Best Small Town PromotionsThe most important tip I can give you is to be sure you have clearly defined objectives. Then define the best promotional technique that will produce the results you are looking for.
Don't be discouraged if some of your early efforts don't produce the expected results. There are no positives in marketing, advertising and promotion. It's a matter of testing, testing testing. The important part is to clearly understand why your promotion didn't work and learn from it.
Start small and when something clicks make it bigger. Good promotions can overcome competition and many other business obstacles.
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