Imagine you owned a food shop in Ikeja. Every morning, you put a sign outside your store with a list of the specials for the day. Everyone that passes your store sees the same sign – regardless of whether they’re a potential customer that has never visited your shop, or a regular that can’t go through the day without dropping in.
Now imagine you could change your street sign for every person that walked past your shop to match their interests and preferences. The person who prefers ‘Amala’ because he is from Oyo. The goat meat lover who visits your stop every evening would see a sign for a special discounts, to further cement his/her loyalty. It’s hard to imagine how this scenario would work in the offline world – but it’s happening for small business owners everyday online.
On the Web, businesses can customize their store sign in infinite ways – and then get instant feedback from their customers about the most effective promotions. They can also reach the millions of people searching for their products and services. By putting their sign online, business owners can tap into a whole new customer base – whether it’s tourists planning their first visit to the neighborhood or locals hunting for nearby offers on their mobile devices.
This may sound complicated, but it’s actually easier (and cheaper) than you think.
Step 1: Make sure your customers can find you
More than one billion people are online – including 48 million Nigerians – which means that these days it’s more important than ever for your business to be online as well. Most small businesses assume that having a Web presence means spending a lot of money to hire a design firm and build a website from scratch – but it doesn’t have to be so. Online directories make it easy to get your business information online with just a few clicks. For example, claiming your Google business listing means your store information will start to appear in Google search results and on Google Maps. You can update your Google listing with information like trading hours, store photos, and even special offers and coupons – all for free. Online directories make it easy (and cheap) to have a Web presence, which can translate into more foot traffic for your store.
Step 2: Learn what your customers want
Once you claim your local business listing, you can tap into a wealth of information about your customers, such as what search terms people use to find your shop. Remember the food shop in Ikeja? In the offline world, the manager would have to ask each customer coming through the door how they found their shop. Online, they can see data about what brings people to their store – did they search for “amala” or “rice” to get the listing for the food shop? Do they live across town, but drive miles for your great selection of single-origin coffee? With insights like that, you can understand your customers and make informed decisions about how to attract more.
If you’ve claimed your Google business listing, you can start tapping into these insights right within your listing. Or, you can use free tools like Insights for Search to compare search trends across time, region, and category to understand things like seasonality and how people search for your business.
Step 3: Find your customers wherever they are
Your offline sign reaches people as they walk down the street and pass by your business. But how do you reach people who don’t pass your store, but live nearby and would visit your shop if only they knew about it? To take another example, if you own a children toy store, how do you catch the eye of parents in your area who don’t walk down your street? How about when they’re reading their favorite children blog or watching videos on YouTube?
Tools like Display Ad Builder let you create professional-looking display ads that mirror your street sign without needing to hire a designer or start from scratch. You can customise dozens of templates with your own text, images, and logo as well as change the colors and background. Once you have a display ad you like, you can place this ad on relevant sites across the Web, such as the cat blog or YouTube videos. Online display ads help you find your customers – without waiting for them to walk past your store.
Step 4: Make your store sign smarter
Let’s say you have a website and you’ve started running your first display ads. Now you’re ready to turbocharge your online store sign and make your ads as relevant as possible for each customer. What’s your next step?
You probably want to start by tailoring your ads to people that have visited your website in the past with a reminder about your special deals and offers. This is called remarketing, and it helps you reach customers that are probably already interested in your products. Instead of a food shop, say you’re a travel agency that specializes in providing specialized holiday packages to Dubai. With remarketing, you can show a coupon for 10% off to people who visited your page about Dubai travel but didn’t book a holiday. Or you can tailor your ads to reach people reading about Asian travel with your trips to Shanghai and people reading about European travel with trips to Milan. Putting your store sign online means that you can customise your sign in infinite ways – and make it as relevant as possible for each of your customers.
Your sign on the street probably does a good job. By taking it online, it could do a great job. On the Web, your store sign can be a lot smarter and it can help you grow your business beyond the street.
