Ashley Moore-Cliff

Like many young professionals fresh out of graduate school can tell you, this market has proven to be difficult to find the level of salary that helps yield a return on the investment of education.  Many recent grads, myself included, are having to work second jobs to help pay off those pesky student loans that are now being billed on.  That being said I consider myself one of the lucky grads who has been able to find work with a great company like Balihoo in the field that I would like to be in. And to supplement additional income, I also work at Ethan Allen Home Interiors as one of the weekend receptionist. The Ethan Allen Design Center of Boise (EADCB) is a locally owned small business that experiences the marketing challenges that small businesses encounter.

 I often find that while working at Ethan Allen, it is hard for me to turn off my marketing brain and thus I am constantly trying to come up with marketing ideas for the owner that are cost effective. Most small businesses don’t have a huge marketing budget; and for that reason it is necessary to make sure the money that is allocated towards local advertising is being used in an efficient and productive way.

While researching marketing ideas for small businesses I found the article Ten Powerful Marketing Tips for the Small Business by Ann Marie Rubertone. In this article, Rubertone outlines ten marketing ideas that small business should consider such as teaming up your marketing efforts with another business, hosting an open house, or simply answering your phones differently. I find this article a great resource for small business owners because it helps generate new and creative marketing ideas. But it is important to remember that before you begin implementing some of these local marketing ideas, you will want to make sure you understand your target audience. Knowing your customer is the key to the success of your local marketing campaign.

 Ethan Allen Corporate has a great knowledge base of their target audience and EADCB works hard at maintaining the corporate image while at the same time making it fit into the local Boise community. Because EADCB knows the importance of buying locally and supporting local small businesses in their community, a large part of their marketing is focused on giving their location a local identity.  EADCB bases a lot of their marketing funds on sponsorships of events throughout the community like Ballot of Idaho, local high school teams and events, and Idaho Voices for Children. They also host various open to the public educational seminars throughout the year, and twice a year have “Customer Appreciation Nights” where they focus on making their customers feel like they are part of the “EADCB family.”

However you decided to distribute your marketing funds, ask yourself two questions; who’s my target audience and will this local store marketing campaign reach them effectively? 

National Doughnut Day is celebrated every year on the first Friday in June. Many of you may think that this holiday was created to commercialize the doughnut industry but there is history behind this holiday.  The first National Doughnut Day was celebrated in Chicago in 1938, as a way to celebrate and honor the Salvation Army “Doughnut Lassies” or “Doughnut Girls” and raise money for the Salvation Army’s efforts during the Great Depression. These women volunteered to help feed the soldiers in France during World War I. 

According the Salvation Army website, these women “served countless treats to grateful soldiers, traversing through the trenches to bring the men doughnuts and coffee. More than just filling an empty stomach, these doughnuts and the joyful presence of the women who worked so hard to make them provided the soldiers with the boost their spirits needed during an extraordinarily difficult time. The doughnuts became an instant hit that was brought back to America by returning doughboys”.

Now that you have learned the history behind National Doughnut Day, let’s take a look at this holiday from a local store marketing standpoint. As we have learned from previous blogs like Local Marketing Ideas- Are Giveaways Good or Bad? on the Balihoo website, discounts, promotions, and giveaways are a great way to boost short term sales and store traffic. On the other hand using discounts, promotions, and giveaways too frequently can have a negative impact on how consumers view the brand’s image.  To guarantee a successful promotion, you must make sure your offer is significant in helping your brand build awareness, create interest, provide information or stimulate demand.  

An article, Creating Powerful Promotional Marketing by Darrell Zahorsky , explains the different types of promotional marketing and outlines a list of questions that small businesses should answer before they launch a local advertising  promotional campaign.  I found the article very helpful in outlining the incentives and objectives of a promotional campaign.

Don't forget to celebrate National Doughnut Day by visiting your favorite doughnut shop today!

Working at Balihoo, I have the privilege of working with franchise owners across several different brands.  A common link among these brands is the franchise owners’ interest in learning how to improve their local store marketing without drastically increasing their marketing budget. One way to promote local store marketing is to market your services or products on social network sites.

I read an interesting article Learning to Use Social Networking Sites for Business by TJ Philpott that gives some helpful guidelines to marketing on-line. The article lays out three points to focus on while marketing to social sites: you can’t please everyone, engage in discussions, and don’t overextend yourself.

You Can’t Please Everyone: When marketing on social sites you have to understand that you can’t please everyone. Not all site members will agree with your statements and be ready to take criticisms. But try to use the complaints and criticisms to help improve your company.

Engage in Discussions: Don’t just sit back and watch the conversations; actively participate in discussions. Try to get to know and understand those members. It is a great way to get feedback from current and potential customers.

Don’t Overextend Yourself: Don’t overextend yourself by participating in multiple on-line social sites. In the beginning try to focus on one site therefore you are able to devote your time to building relationships with those members. As well as learn how to communicate effectively on-line. 

Jeff Bezos said "If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends" Local Internet Marketing on social sites can be very successful if you have the time to devote to developing relationships but be cautious because it can also have a negative impact if done incorrectly. 

Many companies both large and small use social media in their integrated marketing plans. It is a great way to do local marketing. Social media is defined by Wikipedia as “are media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogs. They support the democratization of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content producers.”

Social media uses the Internet to reach its target audiences. There are several different types of social media such as blogs, pod cast, email, instant messaging, etc. (If you are reading this blog you are participating in social media!) Teaming up with a non-profit to promote a special event or cause is a great way to do local store marketing. It helps build your brand as wells as help your local community.

This Earth Day, Coca-Cola North America and the Ocean Conservancy teamed up with a social media campaign. There campaign is advising consumers to help clean up the environment by volunteering, donating money, or MyCokeRewards points to the Ocean Conservancy.

Tom McCann, director of media affairs for Ocean Conservancy stated “We are all trying to find solutions to environmental problems, and the Facebook app is a great way for people to get involved and connect with the ocean”. 

Ocean Conservancy is asking Facebook members to “pledge to change your profile photo to an underwater image and Coca-Cola will donate $1 per picture in your honor, up to a total of $200,000, to Ocean Conservancy between now and May 12. Oceanus your photo now: http://bit.ly/9PmU4g” According to the social media campaign”.  It will also contribute up to $50,000 through the Micrometers points program.

This is just one of many social media campaigns that are promoting Earth Day 2010. I encourage you all to celebrate Earth Day by getting involved in your local community!