Retailers spend less money advertising by targeting customers.

Although the shotgun approach of high priced media buys for the largest audience possible may work for large stores with big budgets it is seldom efficient for smaller stores.  To be cost effective with a limited budget a retailer must define his target customer and advertise to fewer but more motivated consumers.

For radio, specific formats and shows within the day that the target  customer likely listens to is very efficient way to invest dollars.  The same reasoning follows for TV by advertising on local shows that are less expensive than prime time.  Direct mail which targets income levels and population areas of target customers will likely bring more customers per dollar spent than the shotgun approach of newspaper.

As with any advertising expenditure, all money spent must be tracked by customer traffic and asking the customer which media was the motivation  to come in and shop.  Consistently fine tuning advertising formats and testing new ones to achieve optimum efficiency is key to achieving increased traffic flow.  This way a retailer can cut the non performing formats and put advertising dollars in formats that generate better returns.

Brick and mortar advertising

The American consumer has been conditioned to respond to sales events.  Unless a specialty retailer has no competition, either physical or on the internet, many customers will not shop there if there is no special limited time discount.  An excellent example of customers turning their backs on stores is J C Penney.  When JCP brought in a CEO formerly of Apple he was going to reeducate the consumer to the value of "Everyday Low Prices".  Although the pricing was exceptional the consumer was not swayed to shop there because there were no sales with special discounts.  Well, he was fired for nearly bankrupting the company because you can't educate consumers to buy.  It is not a rational but an emotional decision.  Most consumers want the special deal.

The internet retailer has a totally different business model where people shop for the lowest price or special service and then click.

The challenge for the brick and mortar store is to advertise high impact sales effectively which will then enhance the brand as a value leader and give consumers in the market on that day for that product a reason to come in and shop.  Success is directly proportionate to how well a retailer advertises to the target customer.

Success in advertising

There are many small furniture stores owners who want to spend as little as possible on advertising.  They view advertising as an expense rather than an investment. This is understandable when ad dollars are misspent on the wrong media and or ads have low production value so the return on the investment is small.  The problem is unless they advertise effectively they continually lose market share to bigger competitors and the internet.

Defining the target customer, refining the message and the appropriate media is the first step toward success.  Small store owners with low sales growth should refresh their marketing by testing new ideas to find which are successful to generate a better return for their advertising dollar and increase market share.