In the last issue, I noted that the most fundamental key to successful store marketing was planning your sales growth. Local Store Marketing is one of the most valuable tools in your sales plan arsenal that may be overlooked frequently. Most of us budget our marketing efforts around Advo's, Val-Paks, and doorhangers, without really looking at our trade areas for sales opportunities. While using other advertising resources can produce results, the truth is that local store marketing is one of the least costly, and most proven tools to achieve long-term business relationships with your customers.

I also discussed the need to have a firm understanding of the types of current as well as potential customers within your trade area, noting that your trade area is not the same as your delivery area (if you have one). Your delivery area is the physical area that you service delivery customers. Your trade area consists of the entire area that you service all customers. Therefore, your trade area probably exceeds your delivery if you think about it.

Third, I pointed out that just as you take inventory of your food, take inventory of your customers. We sometimes fall into the mindset that there are X amount of customers in our trade area, and that's it. But if you really think about your trade area, your customer base changes daily. Customers move in to your area, customers move out. What about that group of potential customers that only work in your trade area? Or what about that group of potential customers that visit your area during sporting events or during shopping activities? Fathom the number of potential customers that are working or visiting your trade area daily! That number is staggering.

But my POS system does this for me!

Advertising Versus Local Store Marketing

However, advertising is different from local store marketing. Advertising sends a message to the masses in the hopes that the intended audience responds or takes action on that message. Billboards, Radio, TV, Val-Paks, Advo's... These are advertising tools that blanket random groups of people by chance. If I happen to be listening to a certain radio station, watching a certain TV station, driving on a certain highway, glancing through an ADVO, opening a Val-Pak envelope, or reading an "I Miss You" postcard from your store, I may get your message. It's another new challenge for you to get me to act upon your message, and that is to pick up the phone and call you for your product! Advertising should play a part in your sales building plans to stimulate current and past customer purchase of your product for the short-term. But Local Store Marketing is critical to harness potential customers into becoming current customers for the long-term.

Local Store Marketing is a specific plan targeted to a specific group of potential customers within your trade area. The purpose of LSM is to create awareness, and initiate trial purchases of your product within a new potential customer market right in your own backyard.

Identifying your Potential Customers

Today, I'd like to show you how to identify all potential customers within your trade area, and demonstrate how to "re-think" your customer potential for greater sales results. The key to defining potential customers in your continuously changing trade area is to determine what about these potential customer "groups" have in common.

What do they do in your trade area and/or where do they go in your trade area? These are the two fundamental questions that need to be answered before you can begin to identify who you will be partnering with to execute your LSM plans. I don't want to get ahead of the ball here, but we have to start with your potential customers first.

1) What do they do? Do they shop, work, exercise, bank, live, dine, entertain, etc. in your area? What other activities would potential customers engage in while in your trade area? What is there to do in your trade area? (great question for your Chamber of Commerce or tourist center...)

2) Where do they go? Do they go to the theater, sporting events, shopping malls, specialty outlets, parks, skating rinks, factories, hospitals, museums, non-profit organizations, libraries, universities, schools, home? Where in your trade area would they go?

Again, targeting potential clients with advertising may achieve short-term results, but to build your customer base and sales, you need to look at the long-term trade area potential. With local store marketing, you can create and establish long-term business relationships with your customers.