THE RULES HAVE CHANGED

Today I visited an area where I used to live and to my horror discovered that the local butcher shop and fruit shop had closed and in fact the other surrounding shops were empty. The guy from the Post Office confirmed that it was due to a lack of trade and the local supermarkets. I have to say I was a little upset.

I used to shop at this butcher shop for several years and would visit the shop every week. The guy who ran it was your typical friendly butcher with a great personality and he ran the shop with his wife and children. There was always a queue and it was a pleasure to shop there. So why did his business close? In fairness, there are four large supermarkets within a five mile radius and that is going to bring about increased competition.

So how do shops like this survive?

I know this sounds sad, but in the car I was thinking of some Marketing Strategies that I would have employed if it was my shop.

  1. I would have a loyalty card, similar to Tesco’s and you would earn points every time you shopped
  2. I would have special offer days-i.e. Rump Steak Wednesday, 10% off for pensioners on a Tuesday etc
  3. I would have a recipe of the week and every week dish them out to the customers who visited the shop
  4. Collect everyone’s email and home address and do a mailing with offers, advice tips and again maybe even the recipes. That way the customer would come in and buy the meat from them
  5. Mailers at different time of the year i.e. Bank holidays, Christmas, Easter etc
  6. He made some amazing pies; maybe he could run a few cookery evenings etc.

There are probably more things he could have done. If he employed all of the above Marketing Strategies, or at least some of them, would he be open today? I am not sure, but I am certain it would have helped. The lesson I took away is that in today’s economy, just putting a sign up above a shop and hoping that customers will visit and do business with you are over. The rules have changed, probably forever. It will never be like it was. It is a different world we live in and it requires different rules.

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