13 Sure-Fire Ways to Bring Customers In Your Door Today

For clothing boutiques, restaurants, coffee shops, florists, salons, bakeries and every other kind of business that thrives on foot traffic, one of the most invaluable benefits of social media is the immediate access it offers to customers.

With a little creativity and flexibility, you can use Facebook and Twitter to bring more customers through your doors every day. Elicit a direct response without taking the hit for printing and postage to send a mass mailing, and broadcast frequent, time-sensitive updates without spamming your customers’ e-mail inboxes.

Just remember, in a real-time world, timing is everything.

What’s for lunch?

It’s 11:00 a.m., and your customers are feeling the mid-morning lull. As breakfast fades into a distant memory, hunger begins to creep in.

It’s the perfect time to post an update with your daily specials. After an hour of dreaming about your rich, creamy pumpkin soup, it will be hard to think of another option.

I saw it on Twitter

Offer limited-time exclusive sales and discounts for fans and followers who mention your tweet or repeat a special promotional code at the check-out counter.

The new fish bowl

Everyone knows the fish bowl on the bar where you drop your business card for a chance to win a free lunch.

Create your own virtual fish bowl by picking up the tab for a randomly selected follower who retweets your daily specials or likes your latest update on Facebook.

What’s hot now?

Driving by a Krispy Kreme store, it’s all but impossible to resist the sirens’ song of the “Hot Now” sign.

The same concept applies in the virtual world. Got a batch of warm peach pies fresh out of the oven, ready and waiting for a scoop of vanilla ice cream? Post a tantalizing tweet and reap the benefits of the power of suggestion.

Be their social director

When mid-afternoon Friday rolls around, water cooler talk turns to weekend plans. Capture the after-work crowd by posting your happy hour special or open mic night.

Never find yourself under the weather

Don’t let the rain dampen your sales. When skies are grey and temperatures are falling, your customers might not be inclined to venture out into the elements. But what chilly cube-dweller could resist the allure of a perfectly brewed espresso?

No such thing as a slow night

Is business unusually slow on Saturday evening? Turn your night around by tweeting “Hungry? No wait tonight @CornerCafe.”

Got a few gaps in your appointment book? Fill those empty slots by offering a one-day 2-for-1 special.

What’s new and what’s now?

Post a photo and tell us why your hot new arrival is this season’s must-have.

Even customers who stopped in just last week will be tempted to come back and make sure they’re the first to be seen sporting the latest trend.

Answer a question before it’s asked

Your customers may not be thinking about their holiday plans just yet, but you are definitely thinking about your holiday bookings.

Create a sense of urgency by sending out a tweet like “Jingle bells will soon be ringing! Book your party now while reservations are still available!” to spur them to action today.

While you're in the neighborhood

Is there a special event happening that will bring your customers to your area? Jump on the bandwagon by offering a promotional tie-in or themed refreshments that will entice them to stop by.

The race is on

Want a quick traffic boost? Offer a special freebie to the first few fans through the door who repeat a secret phrase.

Where everybody knows your name

Everyone likes to feel they’re part of the club. If you regularly post updates with photos of guests or shout-outs to loyal customers, others will be drawn in by the desire to get in on the action.

Don’t forget your manners

As nice as it is to hear the cash register ring, don’t use your social media megaphone exclusively for self-promotion.

To earn the lasting loyalty of your fans and followers, be sure to provide helpful, useful news, information and links, too, and keep them coming back for more.

 

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Attention! Five Techniques for Creating Ads that Engage

"Half my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half." This was the lament of 19th-century retail pioneer John Wanamaker. If you can relate, then take heart because you're in good company. Wanamaker is considered by many to be the father of modern advertising. Fast-forward more than 100 years to our modern digital era. We now have ability to measure consumer activities and ad engagement at a level of granularity that would make Wanamaker drop a lot of those "wasted" advertising dollars. But if we're honest, many of us will admit that in spite of the powerful analytics tools at our disposal, measuring ad engagement is still a bit of an art. Fortunately, there's another side to Wanamaker's story – and ours. He made up for his lack of metrics by investing in creativity and hiring the now legendary John Emory Powers to write ads for his stores as the first ever full-time copywriter. And Powers delivered, doubling Wanamaker's sales from $4 million to $8 million in just a few years – a few 1880s years. Dollars have always been the best kind of metric, right? So find encouragement in the stories of Wanamaker and Powers. Just as the search for better advertising analytics continues today, so does the reality that really creative, wonderfully executed ads still impact brand growth and sales. Here are five techniques for approaching advertising in a way that will engage your customers and increase your sales:

1. Get their attention.

When asked the secret to advertising, John Powers famously said, "The first thing one must do to succeed in advertising is to have the attention of the reader. That means to be interesting." Well said, John. The art of getting readers’ (or viewers’) attention begins with understanding them – what they like, what keeps them up at night, what motivates them to act, etc. While gaining such audience insights sounds like the stuff of psychics – or at least large ad firms with big analytics budgets – in actuality, we all have everything we need to get attention built right into our brains. It's human nature. We know exactly how to get the attention of other people in our lives: a romantic interest, a child, a coworker, a family member, a friend. We don't use the same tactics in every relationship but instead match our approach to the nature of the connection and what we know or intuit about that individual. I can vouch for these intuitive analytics from my own experience in the early days of dating my wife. The first time she laughed at one of my very nerdy jokes, I knew that more were sure to follow. Similarly, a parent's voice often changes in tone when addressing a misbehaving child. A friend knows just the right way to start a conversation when asking for a big favor. We just know how to get people in our lives to listen. Now consider your best customers. What characteristics define them as a group? What kind of values draw them to your brand? The answers to these and similar questions will help you identify what types of headlines, images and ideas will get their attention.

2. Tell a story.

Storytelling was the primary method of Powers. He didn't just say a product was great; he explained why it was great in credible terms that the reader could understand and embrace. Consider this ad he wrote for Murphy Varnish Company: Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. Skillfully told stories are timeless and make for great advertising because they get past our suspicion that we're being sold something. They communicate brand messages in human terms that viewers can relate to. So whether you're writing copy for a Google AdWords campaign, a full-page spread in a magazine, a banner ad or a TV spot, look for an opportunity to tell a story. Ram tapped into this power of story with its recent and very popular Super Bowl ad "God Made a Farmer." The ad very acutely associates the truck brand with the toughness and tenacity of the American farmer.

3. Create a content experience.

Great advertising does more than just tell us something about a product; it delivers a brand experience that will stick with us much longer than facts and features. Connecting ads with content is nothing new. Sponsored radio programs, advertorials in newspapers and product placements on TV shows have been around since the early days of those media. Now, interactive advertising, both online and mobile, is taking advertising content experiences to new levels by utilizing technologies never before available. It should come as no surprise, then, that digital publishing organizations are pioneering this content-driven ad future. Say Media's AdFrames placements let brands create experiences without the viewer having to leave their current web page. To promote its Mad Men collection, Banana Republic used this AdFrames approach to deliver a micro-magazine experience, complete with video about the collection and miniature articles about Mad Men style, all with the click of a sidebar ad. Screenshots courtesy of Say Media and Banana Republic.

4. Be relevant.

By tapping into a trend that's already popular, you can capitalize on people's interest in the topic to get eyes on your ad. But don't just regurgitate what others are doing. Add your own twist to bring something new to the conversation. Tide leveraged the meteoric popularity of Betty White and the trend of placing the lovable actress in slightly sassy situations to promote, quite cleverly, the detergent's ability to "Break the Rules of White." By tying in other pop-culture trends, like giving a nod to popular reality series Jersey Shore, Tide created the ultimate pop-culture mashup that positions the decades old brand as still relevant to new, younger audiences.

5. Be smart.

There's a common maxim today that says marketing content should be simplified to an eighth-grade level. But while your choice of words should always be accessible to the widest possible audience, the core idea of your ad should never be dumbed down. You can communicate clearly without underestimating the intelligence of your audience. Brilliant ads are loved because they are brilliant. They leave us wondering, "Why didn't I think of that?" I had a such an experience recently. My city is filled with billboards for a colon screening campaign. The campaign brings some positive, even light-hearted vibes to the often uncomfortable topic of colon screenings. The logo for the "Love Your Colon" campaign very simply and very smartly flips the heart symbol to resemble, well, you know...

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