3 Small Businesses Show You How To Be The Cream Of The Crop

Dear Reader,Small Business Marketing Ideas

This week the US passed a grim milestone: 500,000 people have died from COVID.

On Monday evening, President Biden made a moving speech to mark this national tragedy. The White House was dressed in black bunting and candle lights to show our grief.

Marketing Lesson:

• Take the time to empathize with your audience. At the end of the day we deal human-to-human. Not showing you care as a business makes your organization invisible. And that hurts sales and loyalty.

Across the US, the snow has dumped its white fury.
While here, In New York City, the snow keeps blowing in but doesn’t stay very long.

Even worse, a Polar Vortex ventured into southern states, in most years, it stays away from their warm weather.

My heart goes out to the people of Texas. Beyond the extreme cold and snow, their electricity failed and their pipes froze due to the inability of their deregulated oil and gas power grid to supply sufficient resources. So, many Texans had no power or water for days.

Even worse, when the power and water came back on, water pipes burst and bills skyrocketed into the thousands of dollars for a month or less of electricity.

This underscores the problem when deregulation meets a Black Swan event: a rare and unusual occurrence.

Why?
Because utility regulation compensates natural monopolies. It does so by keeping prices reasonable to protect public safety and guarantee fair customer treatment.

Further, it ensures backup providers supply power in an emergency.

For marketers the public outcry in Texas due from frozen pipes and mega-utility bills has an important pricing lesson.

While pricing can accomplish a number of marketing goals:

• Make sure your audience understands what they are paying for and the tradeoffs they’re making.
• Also, make sure that they can afford your products and services.

Otherwise you may lose money since:

• Customers will return their purchases (and you may not be able to sell them.)
• Or, you’ll have to spend money to collect payments or write them off.

 

Small Business Marketing Ideas

In Manhattan, COVID has taken its toll on retail.

Along Fifth Avenue, more and more storefronts continue to empty out. They leave wide open spaces dressed only in “For Rent” signs.

Despite decreased foot traffic in my New York City neighborhood, three local stores continue to attract a clientele. Even better, they provide useful marketing lessons for other small businesses.

Fishs Eddy

Named for an exit on the New York State Thruway, Fishs Eddy started by selling used plates and silverware no longer used by hotels and other institutions.

It’s located along the Ladies Mile, the shopping district of the 1880s. Appropriately, it resides in the building where Gorham Sterling had a store.

Over the years, Fishs Eddy has continued to update and extend its offering. Its products have a retro feel.

Often, they include a quirky New York City sensibility to them. And the store uses humor to sell otherwise difficult-to-sell products.

To attract attention with timely messages, Fishs Eddy uses its store windows. Every retailer should use their store window to attract attention. Take advantage of what you have to get people to help spread the word about your business.

Currently, they’re using their hand mannequins to promote COVID vaccines. While inside, these hand models are jovially promoted with a message about hand jobs.

Actionable Marketing Lessons For Stores:

• Create a shop within your store. For example, the owner’s son has a small gallery of dog paintings. He paints people’s dogs and cats. This provides for made-to-order products.
• Write a related book. The owner wrote a book about the store.

 

Bottle Rocket

Located just west of Fifth Avenue, Bottle Rocket, a liquor store, has tapped into the power of its vacant Fifth Avenue neighbor. They’ve put up signs on the building to direct prospects to their store. (BTW—I’m not sure if this is legal.)

Bottle Rocket takes a fun approach to stand out among the many liquor stores near my home. They write quirky messages on the sidewalk signs outside of their store.

Unlike many wine sellers who group wines by location of origin or price, Bottle Rocket adds retail content marketing to help customers to select an appropriate wine based on the type of food being served.

There are several displays focused on different types of takeout. Beyond describing the type of meals, they include information about the wine choices. Adding to the fun, each cubic display is topped with a fun food related element. I loved the pizza box and the ice cream sundae.

Actionable Marketing Lessons For Stores:

• Take a page from supermarket checkout isles. Unlike many liquor stores, Bottle Rocket has a full display of drink-related products. Beyond gift bags, they offer a full range of fun products that will add joy to your purchase, especially if it’s a gift. Even better, they increase the average purchase size.

 

Blick Art Materials

As the School of Visual Arts continues to expand across my neighborhood, we’re blessed with 2 Blick Art Stores. While my artistic skills are limited, I’ve always loved spending hours in art stores. And Blick doesn’t disappoint.

In addition to broadly interpreting the meaning of “art supplies”, they offer fun toys and tchotchkes (aka: knick-knacks). I’m a regular since these small items are great to send to friends to brighten their COVID days.

In front of the Blick store on West 23rd Street near Eighth Avenue, one of their employees delighted passersby by creating a fun welcome sign on the black sidewalk. It’s a bigger than average use of user-generated content.

Actionable Marketing Lessons For Stores:

• Showcase your user-generated content. Blick’s staff pasted customer drawings on an internal column. These drawings were rescued from the blank art books where customers test their supplies.

 

Meet Project Voice CEO Bradley Metrock in your home city during Project Voice’s Coast-to-Coast event. He’ll be in these cities this week:

• Wednesday, February 24 in Newark, NJ at The Fox and Falcon,
• Thursday, February 25 in Philadelphia, PA at Frankford Hall, andl
• Friday, February 26 in Washington, DC at The Royal.

I hope you, your family and friends, and your community stay healthy and safe.

Small Business Marketing Ideas

As always feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or other input that can help our broader community.

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Happy Marketing,
Heidi

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► Big tip of my hat to Aaron Orendorff for spotlighting me in his Content Marketing Institute article 50 of the Best Social Media Tools Selected by Top Marketers. This article provides you with a list of the top social media tools you need to help you improve your social media marketing results.

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