Beat Wal-Mart Bloody with a Blog in Five Steps

Big box stores are not the reason why mom-and-pop shops go out of business. The reason why the little guys fail is because their positioning and their marketing sucks (sometimes their merchandise and their customer service sucks, too). You can’t blame Wal-Mart for your woes when you’re not willing to suck it up and do what it takes to effectively compete against them.

Just what does it take? Imagination, work, and learning to do some things which may seem scary and new. No matter how scary or uncomfortable these tasks seem, remember this: the alternative is that you go out of business. You fail. You won’t be able to look your family members in the eye, because you’ll be ashamed you let them down. You will be even more scared when the heating bill comes, or the credit card bills.

What I’m going to ask you do will be child’s play compared to all that. So shut up about how you don’t “like marketing” and save your business.

You Can Win Against Wal-Mart

There are tons of small shops and online businesses which are thriving against the big box stores such as Wal-Mart and even against virtual big box stores like Amazon. So… if they can do it, you can, too, and you certainly can’t blame the big chains for your poor marketing. If others are succeeding, why not you? Of course you can win against the big guys. People do it all the time. Not only is it possible, it’s actually easier than you think (provided you can get over yourself—the only thing holding you back is you). This isn’t some stupid woo-woo “The Secret” bullshit. I’m going to share concrete steps with you.

Step One: Start Building an Email List. Like, Yesterday

If there’s one thing I’d burn into the brain of every business owner with a high-powered laser, it’s this: build your email list and use it to increase sales. I’m simply stunned at businesses failing to do something as simple as send a freakin’ email once in a while. The benefits are huge: you will make more money, it’s that simple.

Get an email list provider like Aweber and start collecting addresses. Then, create one email they’ll receive automatically upon joining the list. In this email, tell them that if they mention the email to you when they make their next purchase, they will get 15% off their order. This is a special thank you just for joining the list. See my previous post about email marketing for more info.

When customers come in to shop, ask them if they’d like to be notified of specials and discounts in advance. Expect them to say yes (practice with someone—seriously). Then ask them “Can you save me some postage and let me contact you by email?” Of course they’ll say yes. Have them write down their email address (make sure you can read it) or tell it to you so you can type it into spreadsheet (or directly into Aweber) Tell them they’ll receive a confirmation email, they’ll have to click a link in it to confirm they want on the discount list. Then tell them you’re going to send them a special gift just for signing up (that’s the first automatic email I mentioned in the previous paragraph).

Always ask for email addresses. Get them. And then email your list every week or every two weeks like clockwork. Your business depends on it. This is probably the single biggest mistake you’re making.

The job of your emails is get people into the store. If you remind them you exist and give them specials, they will come in more often. This doesn’t have to even be a big deal. Say, for example, a new product comes in. That’s the perfect event to make an announcement about. You write a post on your blog (I’ll get to that in a minute) and you past a link to it in an email. Send the email to your list. That will send traffic to your blog. And that will send foot traffic into your store. If you send nothing, nothing happens. As Wayne Gretzky famously said: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” So send something. You have to remember to do it. It’s your job to get people into the store.

Most big chains don’t ask for email addresses (and when they do, they don’t ask in the right way, guaranteeing rejections) and don’t do any noteworthy email marketing. By being in touch and in contact with your customers, you’ll be doing something the big box stores can’t do.

Step Two: Get a Blog and Go Crazy

If you haven’t yet read Commerce Blogging 101, you need to: it’s your blueprint for how to blog your small business. Blogging is vital. Does your local Home Depot or Wal-Mart have a blog? No. And even if they did, your customers aren’t reading it. If you get email sign ups, you’re also going to get blog traffic.

Don’t worry about technical stuff like RSS feeds. Nobody knows what the hell RSS feeds are, anyway. Growing your email list means you will send traffic to your blog. How? Simple: Every time you write a new post on your blog, send out an email with a link in it to the post. Say something like: we just decorated the store for the holidays, click the link below to see the pictures! or whatever you blogged about. Maybe something hot just arrived and you’ve only got so many in the most common size and you don’t know how long they’ll last before you can order them again. And that’s true, isn’t it? You don’t.

You will never run out of things to blog about. If nothing else, take a picture of a product and write about that product: what it is, what people do with it, what the benefits are, why people like it, how to get the most out of it. If you’re running low on it, say so, because scarcity creates purchases. And prepare to be amazed: people will come in the door and start buying it. Especially if the product is scarce or relevant to the season or a specific event, like a holiday sale.

It’s not rocket surgery, folks. But you know what? Wal-Mart doesn’t ask for customers’ email addresses. Wal-Mart’s not doing this! Wal-Mart has no personal touch, no personal contact.

They lose, you win.

Step Three: Get Social

Social networking is very strongly connected to blogging. Each enforces the other. At the very least you need to get free online accounts at:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Flickr
• YouTube

You can use Twitter to drum up a lot of business, just like Korean Taco vendor Koji did.

So many people are on Facebook, that it just might become an alternative method for keeping in touch with your customers beyond email.

Flickr is picture hosting, and as I said in Commerce Blogging 101, you want to be taking pictures of your shop and your merchandise like crazy.

YouTube is for videos. Yes, you should be shooting videos. Seriously, it’s not a big deal. You shoot a video of a product being demonstrated or explained, just like they do on QVC, except you’re just going to be yourself instead of some weird psycho salesperson. Then, you upload it to YouTube. Then, you get the address of the video and paste it into your blog post. Ta-da! Video blogging anyone can do.

Are you going to let a little thing like a wee bit of nervousness stand in the way saving your business? Think about what’s at stake, here, and grow some guts.

The big box stores are lame when it comes to this stuff. You can completely outmaneuver and outrun them. The goal is to be tightly integrated into the lives of your customers, to have real and strong relationships with as many of them as possible. You want to be like Cheers: you want to know everybody’s name.

A few years ago, these tools didn’t have the popularity and acceptance they now enjoy. You had to be a bit of a geek to get any real leverage out of them. During that time, the big box stores had the upper hand with their big websites and their “economies of scale.” The little guys still had blogs and email marketing, but now that social networking and DIY video is easy and mainstream, it’s become the clincher in the trifecta of small business marketing: blog, email, and social media.

Step Four: Build Up Your Local Search Presence

Nobody looks in the phone book anymore.

People find stuff online nowadays through search, through that Google box. Will they find you? You can increase the chances of being found if you do a few things.

Get on Google Local Search.

When you keep writing about stuff on your blog that people in your area are searching for, post after post, you’re creating this build-up of content all about one thing; your shop and what it offers.

Here’s a HUGE search engine tip. Use this headline template when you write posts for your blog:

{adjective} {product} in {location} is/are {description/action} at {your business}!

Some examples:

• Hottest Handbags in Burlington are the New Gucci Clutches at Handbag Heaven!
• Rarest of Bog Oak Briars in Vermont is Selling Quickly at John’s Tobacco Temple!
• Cutest Imported Japanese Toys in Montpelier are Melting Hearts at Word Toy Imports!

Now, you can’t do this for every single post you write, or it gets old. But, notice how the headline template is structured to include all the right search terms. All you have to do is fill in the blanks!

This is one of the reasons why blogging is such a powerful tool for you: it makes your website into a search engine magnet.

Step Five: Figure Out Why You’re Different and Work that Into Everything

As a little “mom & pop shop,” you have no hope of competing against big box stores on selection and price. None.

Do not try. Instead, specialize. Here’s a lesson you can learn from restaurants. In most towns, national chain restaurants sit cheek-by-jowl with independent restaurants, don’t they? And over the years, you may have noticed that being a chain is no guarantee of success. In my town, for example, the Quizno’s went belly-up while the Subway stayed strong and the Taco Bell —much to my dismay—closed down years ago. But a host of local, independent restaurants are still going strong. Our local natural foods co-op recently expanded even though chain grocery stores are nearby.

Six Ways to specialize:

• Go local: feature as much locally produced merchandise as you can.
• Go green: emphasize how you’re taking steps to reduce consumption and waste; feature natural products.
• Go high end: there is always a market for the big ticket items. One thing about rich people: they’re always rich.
• Go narrow: reduce the number of product categories you sell to those not found elsewhere. Be imaginative in your product mix. For a town as small as the one I live in, we have an amazing total of four bookstores downtown! They specialize: one is used books, one is sci-fi/fantasy/graphic novels/gaming, and one is anti-establishment/countercultural (the last is the “normal” bookstore).
• Go high-touch: everyone laments the lack of customer service nowadays; show your customers what real customer service is (you’re probably not as good at it as you think you are, so get training and train your staff rigorously). Nobody’s going to get a holiday card from Home Depot.
• Go for the money: most of you are terrible salespeople. You have had little or no retail sales training. I know for a fact you can be a better salesperson and make tons more money per customer, because I’ve done it (I’ve spent many years in retail). Not only that, but you can do it in ways that make your customers love you even more, without coming off as sleazy. Do you think anyone at a big box store would get this kind of training? No! They’re terrible at this stuff. You can get good at it. Deadly good at it.

In short, the more different you are from the big box stores, the better: you don’t look like them, you don’t merchandise or display like them, you don’t package like them, and you don’t treat your customers like them, and you don’t sell like them.

Not only can you save your business if it’s in trouble, you can even thrive against the big box stores.