The High Street isn't dead, it's evolving

If you are a traditional high street business, you may find it competitive and are constantly vying for the same local trade, how do you stand out? Instead of waiting for customers to drop in at your premises, or paying for advertising, would there be other cost effective ways of increasing footfall?

Or you may want to attract a different or a younger segment of the market that you haven't been able to reach out to before eg if you are a restaurant that’s quiet during lunch time on a weekday, how do you get the working from home crowd, stay at home mums/dads, or office workers on your street to visit your restaurant more often?

If you are a shop or office experiencing lull periods where you don’t get many appointments or walk in traffic, how do you remind your customers of you especially when there are other similar businesses down the same street?

There are a variety of complex reasons why some high street businesses thrive year after year, while many survive from hand to mouth, eventually a few will decide to cash in their chips or go bust. But the good news is, if you're a startup or a small business, you are able to change and adapt much more quickly than the big high street brands can ever do. One of the ways of bringing more customers to your business is to harness mobile technology for your sales and marketing.

Consumers now are increasingly using their smartphones to research products and services local to them that they want to buy. Out of these local searches on their mobiles, 78% of these searches will eventually result in an offline sale. In fact there is further research which shows that out of these 78% of searches conducted, at least 50% will visit the business within a day.

So, how would it help your business if your customers can see you on their smartphones? (Source: HubSpot Nov 7, 2017). The answer in part is by being mobile - being mobile allows your business to be accessible to people who do local searches on their smartphones!

What do I mean by "being mobile"?

First of all your business will need a mobile friendly or responsive website. Setting up a profile page on social media may be great for your brand, however the way someone who's completely new to your business searches for your type of product or service is still overwhelmingly via internet search.

How do I know that?

Current research on consumer buying behaviour shows that this is still the case, whether you're a Millennial, Generation X or a Baby Boomer. So, unless you have a ready base of followers waiting to buy from you, don't stinge on a website thinking you can get away with just a social media profile!

Secondly, Business Apps can be a great way to interact with your customers who are constantly on the go, whether it's sending your local customers targeted push notifications packed with great offers, timely deals or news about your local events/workshops, or offering them a loyalty coupon / stamp via the app.

Thirdly, by setting up an account with Google my Business, you are allowing Google to advertise your business to consumers who do local searches. 

These are all good ways to start grabbing a share of your local consumers' attention. Have a look at the type of searches consumers do from Google's recent research on app related searches. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how popular or "search friendly" your product / service will be if you have an app.

Good luck and do let me know how you get on.

Joyce Ong, Marketing Tech - Cool Clever Customisable Business Apps to help your Business Grow

Marketing Tech helps businesses that are not generating enough online leads, or are losing customers, missing out on potential sales, or want to convert social media followers into paying customers. These businesses that we help do want to use mobile technology to grow but may not have the interest, time or the skills to make it happen. That's where we come in! We build cool clever customisable native and web apps that can do what conventional websites can't, and also offer the latest in web tech which are responsive sites that provide dynamic personalisation.