These days, so many businesses shun the idea of a physical location, and prefer to do everything online. While this may work for many businesses, especially for those where the employees are working from home, if your brand demands that you have a physical setup, what are the obstacles getting in your way to ensure that it takes off successfully, but isn’t swallowed up by exorbitant costs?
Location and Space
It’s common sense really to say that in order to make a business actually gain traction from a physical location, you’ve got to have enough people walking past it. There can be a lot of importance placed on the actual spot you are in and the amount of foot traffic you get past your store – for example if you are based in the middle of a bustling high street – however you’ve also got to the give consideration to the actual size of the store itself. It is all good and well finding a prime spot but if the store is too big or too small for your stock holding, it can really loose any kind of aesthetic appeal you were hoping for. If there’s some small pokey store at the end of town and that’s all you can afford at the time, it’s worth thinking ahead and getting planning approval upfront to expand on those premises. That way, when the business finances turn in your favour, you actually have the size and stature of a store in which to make a real success of it.
Window Appeal
The positioning of your store is not going to help if you cannot translate that foot traffic past your doors into feet through your doors. Your branding, window marketing material and the look or layout of your store inside is of course essential to draw those customers in. This doesn’t have to be super fancy or an extremely costly exercise. Often the simpler and cleaner approach is more affective. However, it must be uniquely you.
Finding The Right People
Once you have got the customer in the store you want to ensure that you’ve got a working setup that communicates an efficient brand. To do this, you’ve got to find the right people. You can argue that because so many younger workers are used to communicating within the online space, great customer service people are very hard to find. And you would be right. This means you’ve got to really do some searching to find the right sort of person. The person who is successful in a face to face customer service role will be able to build up that rapport. While there are so many contact centres or online businesses that don’t deal with customers in the flesh, if you use this as your opportunity to create a business that develops with the customer, and prides itself on top class customer service on a personal level, this is what will ensure repeat customers.
Competing With The Online Equivalent
The hardest thing these days is to make a profit from a brick-and-mortar setup because there are equivalent companies doing it online far cheaper. However, what you have to offer over these other stores is your physical presence and that personal touch with real time solutions. While many online businesses provide a cheap and relatively cheerful service, they don’t necessarily have the same powers at their disposal to deal with customer queries. This is where you can really shine. There are brick-and-mortar stores making a comeback everywhere you look, and if you are to make a success of it, you’ve got to see what the online equivalents are doing, and beat them at their own game. What is essential these days if you have a physical store, is to also have an online purchasing option. That way you are offering both convenience and the opportunity for customers to engage with your products physically thus appealing to a wider customer base. What so many online businesses do not have at all, is that personal approach which many customers long for again in a world so focused on the online space and all its benefits.
The brick-and-mortar store is far from redundant, and it’s important that we harness this to get ahead of the game.
