Why do customers still buy from you? Karen Axelton, veteran entrepreneur reporter and blogger, recently listed five main reasons for small business marketing advice entrepreneurs should realize why people still keep coming into the store to buy. Here they are in no particular order:
–Convenience: We don’t want to call people lazy, but there’s a reason why there’s a drugstore on every single street corner. Sometimes you simply benefit from a good location.
–Expertise: Depending on what you sell, being perceived as an authority figure can make all the difference in the world. It’s also a big reason why we constantly advise entrepreneurs to become good at PR to position themselves as subject-matter experts.
–Trust: Somewhat similar to ‘expertise,’ many of your customers have been shopping with you for a long time and have built up a significant level of trust with you and your company. This is always sound small business marketing advice.
–Relationship: Loyalty programs can be a big help in this one because people like to shop where they’ve developed a relationship - either with you or your employees.
–Empathy: If you’re good to your customers and can empathize with the economic situation, people will respect that and repeat their shopping behaviors with you.
So how do these relate to your business and how are you tapping into each of the five via marketing and public relations?
Here’s Karen’s post which also includes a personal story. Feel free to leave a comment here about the small business marketing advice and explain why you still shop at a certain location.
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What you’re really dealing with here is value. Consumers spend where they find value. Value could be a result of price, convenience, experience, or a host of other attributes. Determine which characteristics your customers value most and build on those.
I agree with Phil’s comment, it is all about an exchange of values. As an experienced purchaser, I worked with the “trinity”: quality, price and delivery (lead) time.