Category Archives: multichannel retailing

Helping Independent Downtown Merchants Engage Effectively In E-Marketing: Part 1

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Introduction

Over the past year, DANTH Inc. has experimented with such social media as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest and revamped our website, blog  and email program. To support this effort we did a lot of research on what the various e-marketing tools do best and the challenges small firms like ours have in using them. In this two-part article I would like to share with the downtown revitalization community what we learned from our e-marketing overhaul, so that more independent downtown merchants (e.g., retailers and restaurateurs) might make an effective transition to e-commerce.

What we learned was the importance of an analytical process able to identify the e-marketing tools that will most effectively use an organization’s scarce resources to achieve critical marketing objectives. This process:

  • Starts off by looking at and prioritizing the organization’s marketing objectives
  • Then matches them with the e-marketing tools (e.g., website, emails, Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc.) that can best achieve each of those objectives. These two topics will be covered here in Part 1
  • And next selects those objective-matching tools that  can be implemented, because the organization has the required financial resources and either has or can acquire the needed skilled employees. This topic will be covered in two weeks in Part 2.

Where Not to Start

In the years preceding DANTH’s entry into the social media, a slew of e-marketing consultants and downtown management types had suggested that we do so because:

  • These e-marketing tools were popular
  • They were chic
  • The astronomical number of people on Facebook and Twitter
  • Most importantly, their purported and vaguely evidenced ability to attract new customers and drive sales.

For us, such “follow the pack” reasoning was plainly inadequate. DANTH is, like many independent downtown merchants, a small establishment, with fewer than five employees. There are limited financial resources available for our e-marketing activities. We long have hired  consultants to set up and technically maintain our website and email blasts and guide our entry into the social media. However, most of DANTH’s e-marketing activities fall directly into my hands, where they compete with many other demands for my time and attention. It was essential to know, when we used an e-marketing tool, that it would be consistent with our overall marketing strategy, effective and affordable in terms of money, my time and the skills sets of the current DANTH team as well as any other skilled professionals we could afford to hire.

Possible Downtown Merchant E-Marketing Objectives

Our field observations strongly suggest that one of the biggest mistakes independent downtown merchants make is to not identify the specific marketing objectives they want their e-commerce activities to achieve. It is essential for them to do so, if they want to effectively use e-marketing tools. Typically faced with a scarcity of money, skills and time, a small operator: a) needs to have objectives in order to make any judgment about the effectiveness of the e-marketing tools the firm invests in, and b) cannot hope to achieve all of the possible objectives. Therefore,  prioritizing them and then focusing on the most important are essential.

There are a wide range of marketing objectives that a small merchant can try to realize through the use of the right e-marketing tools. Here is a brief list of some potential e-marketing objectives:

  • Reaching target market segments
  • Being found on the Internet
  • Finding new customers
  • Branding
  • Making direct sales: setting up an e-storefront
  • Advertising: information about new merchandise, sales , discounts, fun events; driving customers to brick and mortar stores
  • Relationship building with customers; grooming “store apostles”
  • Customer service.

I would argue that when considering e-marketing, for the small independent downtown merchant, the most important of these objectives, the one that all should focus on, is “being found on the Internet.” Here’s why. The most significant impact the Internet has had on retailing is that, today, most shoppers first go online to research the merchandise or service they are interested in and the stores that sell them. For example, a 2010 Pew survey found that “58% of Americans research online about the products and services they buy,” with 78% of Internet users engaging in this online researching (1). Merchants who are not in on the search, consequently, are unlikely to be in on the sale!

“Being found” is complex and entails several components, such as:

  • Name recognition – shoppers can learn who you are
  • Contact info – shoppers can learn where you are
  • Info about merchandise offered – shoppers can find what they want to buy
  •  “Why this store” info – reasons why the shopper should buy what he/she is looking for in this shop.

Merchants in different situations may vary in their needs for each of these components. For example, a new downtown merchant or a pure Internet retailer needs to be concerned about all four components, but a longtime downtown merchant may already be fairly well-known and found with relative ease. If the number of downtown merchants and the trade area population are small and/or relatively stagnant, then more merchants are likely to be in this situation. As a result, in many small and medium-sized downtowns, shoppers are probably more likely to want to know which merchants are offering the goods and services they want to buy and the reasons to make that purchase in that store.  The websites of too many downtown merchants and downtown organizations that provide member merchants with a web page usually just focus on the shop’s name and contact information. Actually, the merchants usually have the stronger additional needs to display their product information and make persuasive appeals to patronize their shops.

Regarding online sales, although they accounted for an estimated 7% of the USA’s 2010 total retail sales, a study by Mckinsey & Company estimated that by 2011 the internet had played a role in 45% of the nation’s retail sales(2). So the vast majority, around 80+%, of the internet’s impact on retail is not via direct sales. E-marketing’s impact is primarily indirect, but still critical. Also, many observers have noted that e-retail stores demand a lot of complex and expensive infrastructure related to storage, shipping and payments. While this barrier that has kept more firms from competing with Amazon, it also is a major reason that more independent downtown merchants have not attempted e-stores and why so many that did have failed.

Some Examples of Matching E-Marketing Objectives to Appropriate E-Marketing Tools

Research on e-marketing tools is still unfolding, with many issues yet unanswered, but this much is clear: e-marketing tools differ in their ability to achieve various marketing objectives. It is critical to select those e-tools that are best able to  achieve your firm’s objectives. For example:

  • The social media differ substantially in their penetration of the online audience: according to a 2012 Pew report, 66% of online adults use Facebook, 20% use LinkedIn, 16% use Twitter and 12% use Pinterest (3).
  • The social media will also differ in their ability to penetrate specific market segments. Some illustrative findings by Pew: “African-Americans, young adults, and mobile users stand out for their high rates of Twitter usage” (4); 19% of online women use Pinterest compared to 5% of online males (3); LinkedIn attracts the most educated and male audience (5).
  • E-commerce tools also vary in their ability to enable a downtown merchant to be found in Internet customer research efforts. The Pew Research Center studied the sources that people rely on to get news and information about local restaurants, bars, and clubs. They found that 38% used a search engine and 17% specialty websites (e.g., zagat.com, urbanspoon.com, tripadvisor.com, etc.), while only 3% relied on a social networking site or Twitter. For finding information about other local businesses Pew’s survey had similar findings: 36% of respondents relied on a search engine, 16% on specialty websites and just 1% on a social media (4).
  • The most searched for online categories, when shoppers seek information about local businesses, are restaurants, financial services and beauty services (8). Firms in these sectors definitely need an easily findable online presence
  • Research also suggests that social media do not drive online sales. For example, one study found that the average order value of e-commerce sales sourced from social media is 25% lower than the average sale coming from emails and 35% lower than those sourced from Internet search. (5). Another study in 2012 by Forrester Research found that only about 1% of e-retail transactions could be traced back to “trackable” social media links. Consumers making a first-time purchase with an e-retailer were far more likely to originate their purchase by first making a direct visit to the vendor site (20%), or finding it via an organic or paid search (16% and 11%, respectively). For repeat shoppers, e-mails and direct site visits are the keys: 30% of their online purchases are sparked by an e-mail from the retailer, while another 30% of repeat customer searches start with a direct visit to the retailer’s site (6).
  • For downtown retailers, the more important question is can e-marketing tools drive customers into their brick and mortar shops and increase sales. We could not find a reliable systematic survey of consumers that addressed this question. However, we did come across numerous anecdotal reports of special product and discount offers distributed via emails, Facebook and Twitter that did bring more customer traffic and sales into traditional retail shops and eateries. For example, one ice cream parlor we visited in a New York City neighborhood reported occasionally offering special flavors only to people visiting their Facebook page and they are always quickly sold out. But, this ice cream parlor has been around for about 50 years and has 8,000 Facebook likes
  • Many e-marketing experts claim that e-marketing tools, especially the social media, are very effective at building customer traffic and sales indirectly through stronger branding, relationship building and better customer service. For example, a 2012 survey of business to consumer marketers by Webmarketing 123 found that the top objectives of their digital marketing programs were increasing brand awareness 33%, increase sales 26%, generate leads 22%, generate site traffic 11%, build online community 6% and other 3% (7). It is interesting that only about a quarter of these marketing professionals were focusing on directly increasing sales. Among these marketers 49% reported search engine optimization had the biggest impact on lead generation compared to 26% reporting it was pay-per-click advertising and 25% the social media.  

What About the Personal and Professional Service Operations? This question was posed by a reviewer of a draft of this article who noted that these firms are so strong in many downtowns. My expectation is that most of the above applies to them too, but that there may be some important differences. For example, I suspect that the potential for effectively using the social media is greater among hair and nail salons, gyms, spas, etc., because they do not primarily sell merchandise and personal relationships are so important in the delivery of their services. Also, as DANTH found, LinkedIn will be very important for professional service firms.

N. David Milder

ENDNOTES

  1. Jim Jansen, “Online Product Research: 58% of Americans have researched a product or service online,” September 29, 2010, Senior Fellow, Pew Internet Project http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-Product-Research.aspx
  2. Steve Noble, Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, Christiana Shi, “The promise of multichannel retailing”, McKinsey Quarterly, October 2009.
  3. Lee Rainie, Joanna Brenner and Kristen Purcell, “Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online,” Sept. 13, 2012, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Online-Pictures.aspx
  4. Aaron Smith and  Joanna Brenner, “Twitter Use 2012,” May 21, 2012, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Twitter-Use-2012.aspx
  5. Keith N. Hampton, Lauren Sessions Goulet, Lee Rainie, and Kristen Purcell “Social networking sites and our lives” June 16, 2011, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Technology-and-social-networks.aspx
  6. The Forrester report, The Purchase Path of Online Buyers, is reported in Brad Tuttle,  Study: Posts on Facebook Almost Never Lead to Retail Sales” TIMEMomneyland Sept 27,2012  moneyland.time.com/2012/09/27/study?posts?on?facebook?almost?never?lead?to?retail?sales/    and Zak Stambor, “Social media posts don’t lead to sale,” Social Media, Sept 25, 2012,  www.internetretailer.com/2012/09/25/social?media?posts?dont?lead?sales
  7. Webmarketing 123,  2012 State Of Digital Marketing  http://go.webmarketing123.com/rs/webmarketing123/images/DMR%202012%20FINAL.pdf
  8. YP.com, “The YP Local Insights Digital Report” http://i2.ypcdn.com/radiant/radiant_assets_47482_YP-Local-Insights-Q3.pdf

THE NEW NORMAL REQUIRES MORE DYNAMICALLY MANAGED DOWNTOWN ORGANIZATIONS

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Introduction

Since even before the onset of the Great Recession at the end of 2007, a new normal for downtowns has been emerging. Downtown retailing, office use, entertainment niches, housing development, population growth, transportation use, etc. have all experienced significant changes. From my discussions with downtown leaders and merchants, municipal economic development officials and developers, my reading of many articles, my participation in online discussions and my assessments of a number of revealing recent RFPs, I have concluded that the vast majority of downtown leaders and their organizations are not adjusting to these rapidly occurring changes. Too often they demonstrate that they are scarcely aware of them, let alone adjusting their operations to deal with them. Some of these changes represent potential growth opportunities, while others pose strong existential threats.

Downtown Retail’s New Normal

In this posting I will focus on retail. Over the past five years the demand for retail space has changed dramatically. For example:

  • There’s been a paradigm change in consumer behavior with the emergence of the “deliberate consumer” who spends less and with greater deliberation, considers needs more than wants, and who uses credit far less often.
  • The Internet is now involved in over 45% of all retail sales — if retailers are not in on the search, they are unlikely to be in on the sale
  • An integrated multichannel approach to retail is increasingly necessary– brick and mortar, internet, b2b sales, trunk shows, concierge services, etc. —  for merchants large and small.
  • The impacts of the internet and the recession have been strongest on GAFO merchants, with the big box stores and small merchants among them hit the hardest. Small downtown merchants who sell GAFO type merchandise are at a growing disadvantage if they do not have an effective presence on the Internet to complement their brick and mortar stores, yet most lack the required resources and skills to create and maintain such a presence. Without an effective e-commerce capability, these small merchants are likely to fail and produce more vacancies that are hard to fill.
  • In many medium and large downtowns, small independent merchants are disappearing at alarming rates because of unaffordable high rents, decreased consumer demand and strong e-commerce competition.
  • Nationally, the amount of retail space decreased by 259 million SF between 2001 and 2011 and is expected to drop by another 210 million SF by 2016. (1).  The number of real estate experts who recognize that the nation has far too much retail space has grown substantially.
  • The suburbs are saturated; growth opportunities are shifting to dense urban areas and possibly some ex-urban areas.
  • Today, only about one-third of the 1,300+ malls in the U.S. are high-growth, investment-grade properties; another one third are in deep trouble and prone to either closing or being re-purposed. (5) The successful malls are increasingly taking on the look and functions of successful downtowns and adding many non-retail functions.
  • Big box and category killer stores – e.g., Best Buy, Staples, Circuit City, etc. – have been hit hard by both the recession and strong e-commerce competitors.
  • Generally, retail chains are looking for fewer and smaller locations. Internet sales mean that many now require less on site storage space for inventory (4).  Many use the resulting cost savings to pay for improvements in their own e-commerce capabilities, while others are developing the smaller formats to ease entry into tight urban contexts.
  • But, the smaller formats eventually may also go into suburban and ex-urban locations, once the chains master them. This may mean that Walmart, Target, Best Buy, et al may be trying to enter more, not fewer communities.
  • Banks are no longer gobbling up prime downtown retail sites with their branches as a result of e-banking, especially the growth in mobile.
  • Many downtowns continue to report significant vacancies and that, when filled, the likely new tenants are personal and professional service operations, not retailers.
  • Downtown food related operations (e.g. groceries and restaurants) and personal services have been the most successful sectors from 2007 through 2012.

Current Response Patterns

Here are some of the response patterns I have observed:

  • There is a strong propensity to believe that, once the ill effects of the Great Recession are overcome, there will be a return to the way things were prior to 2007. Few are aware of the structural changes in the demand for retail space and many of those who are have not really grasped their full implications.
  • There seems to be little recognition that for the foreseeable future it will be much harder for most downtowns to attract retail chains than in the pre-2007 years and that if they want to have any significant retail, they increasingly will need to:
    • Accurately know which retail chains they can realistically expect to attract
    • Go beyond traditional retail marketing and promotions and get deeply into economic gardening type operations aimed at developing and growing small merchants.
  • No one is talking about whether, in the new retail environment, a small “big box” store, like a 15,000 SF Walmart, could be a good thing for their downtown. But, I bet that within the next five years this will be an issue for a surprising number of communities.
  • As talk of downtown multi-use projects has started to come back, the inclusion of retail seems to be divided between those who see retail returning to its pre -2007 days and those who believe retail is now too risky to include at all. Perhaps there is a viable middle ground of fewer retail tenants who can be recruited to and succeed in such downtown projects.
  • Local political leaders too often still expect new downtown mixed use projects will attract a bevy of trophy retail tenants.
  • A surprising number of downtown leaders will acknowledge the need for local merchants to develop a multichannel approach with a strong e-commerce component, but not want their organizations to get too involved in assisting their merchants make this transition. This seems to be largely due to their own lack of knowledge about e-commerce , often age related, and their organizations’ financial constraints.
  • On the other hand, a good number of downtown leaders do want to help get their merchants involved in e-commerce and some have programs to do so. However, too many of these programs are simply e-directories and do not provide the merchants with needed marketing and transaction functions. Few appeared to based on a knowledge of how websites, emails and the social media are used by shoppers and which market segments are most drawn to each of them.
  • The complexity of developing an effective downtown program that can facilitate small merchant e-commerce capabilities is evidenced by the fact that our largest retailers are still trying to figure out how to merge their e-commerce and brick and mortar operations and how to effectively use the social media.
  • The recently announced reorganization of Staples is a good example of this. Motivated by declining sales, adverse consumer trends, the growing importance of its online sales, Staples’ new strategic plan calls for: increased investment in its online and mobile capabilities, further enhancing its multi-channel strength by uniting the management of its online and brick and mortar operations, expanding the range of the merchandise it sells, and an overall 15% reduction in retail store square footage to increase their productivity. The later will entail both store closings and downsizings. (2, 3).
  • Few downtown or Main Street organizations have tried to strategically face the problem of what to do with their excess and often vacancy –prone retail spaces.
  • Faced with vacancies, many downtowns have welcomed, as inevitable, personal and professional service operations as tenants for vacant prime retail locations. However, the lack of enough high quality retail spaces has long been a fundamental barrier to revitalizing downtown retail sectors, so communities following this tack may be severely harming their long-term retail prospects. Admittedly, filling these vacant prime storefronts is highly desirable, but perhaps more innovative and retail-friendly responses could be developed, such as:
    • Tying rentals to service operations to a high vacancy rate (say 12%) in the downtown or blockface
    • Targeting the vacant prime storefronts for such uses as a retail incubator or a location for other types of start-ups
  • The vast majority of the staff and financial resources that downtown organizations now allocate to improving their district’s retailing still goes for old style events and marketing programs. Few of these programs have been evaluated to determine their ability to stimulate more sales and customer traffic. Too often, however, their expense and organizational inertia leaves few dollars left for the development and testing of new and more effective marketing programs.

What Is Needed

The response patterns described above strongly suggest that if downtown leaders and their organizations continue in their “same old, same old” views and operational behaviors, painful failures and missed opportunities are highly probable. What is happening with retail is also frequently happening in the office and entertainment sectors.

Downtown leaders need to recognize that the new normal has emerged and that it is very dynamic, characterized by a frequently changing socio-economic environment. This means that their organizations’ strategies and programs must be frequently assessed and updated to assure their continued relevancy and efficacy. It also means that downtown organizations need to have strong line items in their budgets for developing and testing out on new programs, program evaluations and strategic updates. It also means dropping or down-sizing longstanding, but ineffective programs. All of these are now quite anathema in too many downtown organizations.

Endnotes:

  1. Mark Heschmeyer, “Storefront Loss Equals Warehouse Gain”, CoStar Group News: National, Dec. 14, 2011
  2. Joe Weisenthal,  “Staples Announces Major Store Closures — Will Take A Charge Of More Than $1 Billion”, Sept. 25, 2012, 8:21 AM Business Insider www.businessinsider.com/staples?store?closures?2012?9
  3. Lisa Eckelbecker, “A change of space: Staples again finds smaller is better”, Worcester TELEGRAM & GAZETTE, June 26, 2011
  4. Mark Heschmeyer, “ Virtual War Games: Brick and Mortar Retailers Battle Online Retailing,” CoStar Group News: National, November 09, 2011
  5. Randyl Drummer, Can This Mall Be Saved? Elements Needed for a Turnaround Include Lower Debt, Deep Pockets, CoStar Group News: National , October 10, 2012

CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR: DOWNTOWN MERCHANTS AND CAPTIVE/DAYTIME MARKETS

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The Problem. Downtown economic development 101 long has taught that one of the strongest competitive advantages of downtowns is their multi-functionality, which leads to a number of “captive” daytime market segments, and stimulates multi-purpose and multi-destination downtown trips. These market segments –e.g., workers, students, hotel guests, etc., — are coming to the downtown continually, so merchants do not have to do anything to attract them to their commercial district. It also has long been thought that the merchants could then just concentrate on getting them into their stores and selling to them. Yet, in almost every community DANTH, Inc. has worked in or pitched a proposal to, local retailers were not capturing the sales dollars they should from nearby office workers, hospital workers and visitors, students, hotel guests, etc. Based on my conversations with other consultants and many district managers this problem is fairly widespread…and possibly, even probably the norm.

Lack of Market Segment Awareness and Knowledge.  Many of downtown merchants simply lack an awareness of these captive consumer markets or know very much that is useful about them. For example, one eye opening presentation at the recent conference of the Wisconsin Downtown Action Council reported on research by Bill Ryan and Jangik Jin at the University of Wisconsin Extension that indicates important captive daytime markets are not limited to large cities, as often supposed, but can be found in communities with populations as small as 2,500:

“Overall, approximately one in five Wisconsin jobs are affiliated with businesses that are located downtown.  A very small city with a population of 2,500 will, on the average, have close to 1,000 employees within a half-mile (a 10 minute walk) of the middle of downtown.  A larger city with a population of 50,000 will, on the average, have over 5,000 employees.  These figures indicate that there is a high density of employment in these small geographic downtown areas.  Clearly not all are employed in the shops that line Main Street.  Instead, they are employed is a diverse mix of businesses and organizations within and around the retail core.”[i]

While the Ryan-Jin study just focused on towns in Wisconsin, the picture it paints seems to fit the other states I have lived and/or worked in. Consequently, I bet that if similar studies were done in other states, they would reveal some variation, but substantially comparable results.

The audience’s reaction indicated that they were certainly learning something new and I doubt if nationally many downtown merchants in small (or large) communities know how many people are employed nearby. The Ryan-Jin study is also unique because its focus is on “employment” and not just office workers, white-collar workers, knowledge workers or creative types. They include the blue collar and uniformed workers that I have seldom seen targeted by downtown revitalization plans, but who account for most employees in a whole host of small and medium-sized downtowns.

In many other downtowns we have worked in, neither the downtown organization or their local merchants knew how many office workers were nearby and how they were clustered. Nor did they know much about office worker consumer behaviors, e.g., how often and when they shop, what they shop for. Much the same is true for the student and hotel guest market segments and certainly true for blue collar workers.

Poor merchant awareness and knowledge constrains their ability to target these potential shoppers, to merchandise for them and then market effectively to them.

The Weak Magnetism of Many Retail and Food-Related Destinations. Unsurprisingly, the ICSC’s studies of downtown office workers have shown that office workers will spend more in districts that have strong retail offerings than in districts having fewer shops and less desirable merchandise. These findings also speak to a more general principle, the stronger the magnetism of the retail destination and eateries, the more likely they are to get shoppers to:

  • Go out of their offices, hotels, schools, etc.
  • Walk longer distances.
  • Shop at inconvenient times.
  • Frequent their establishments.

Retailers are clearly unlikely to have much magnetism  if they:

  • Provide customesr with an unappealing in-store experience.
  • Have lackluster product assortments and/or unattractive store environments.
  • Offer poor customer service.

Unfortunately, a lot of downtown retailers fall into the low magnetism category. Great proximity and consumer desperation may produce sales, but for them meaningful penetration of these captive market segments is unlikely unless they significantly improve their merchandise, store appearance and operating procedures. In my experience some non-magnetic merchants may be capable of making such improvements, most are not.

It’s Often Tough to Access These Market Segments: Just because these potential customers are downtown does not mean that they are within easy walking distances of retailers. For example, retailers that are farther than a 5-minute walk from office workers and 10- minutes from hotel guests are unlikely to gain a lot of their patronage. This is a very likely problem in dispersed downtowns, especially those that are composed of several nodes, not just a central core. One downtown that we recently looked at had four of these nodes, another had three.

Commuting students, who often have jobs or heavy household responsibilities, are typically difficult for merchants to capture. Their time pressures, frequent after 5:00 p.m. class hours and campus locations distant from the downtown core makes it very hard to grab their attention and dollars. The retailer must be very close and really have what the student needs.

Today, many companies try to keep their workers from leaving their office buildings during the workday. As inducements, they provide cafeterias, subsidized meals and concierge services to do their shopping and errands for them. Some just keep the workload pressures so heavy that going out seems impractical.

As Ryan and Jin noted, blue collar workers typically are not on the primary downtown streets, but in more secondary and peripheral locations. Their lunch hours may be brief and they tend toward not leaving their workplaces. Many will brown bag or be serviced by a “food truck” or “ordered in” food.

Downtown retailers must be open when hotel guests are prone to shop in their stores and these opportunity windows can vary with the downtown:

  • In Morristown, NJ a huge number of hotel guests are attending conferences that normally “set them free” after 5:00 p.m. By 5:15 or 5:30 they may be outside looking for things to do, including shopping. That does not give them much time to get to and shop in the stores that close at 6:00 p.m.
  • The skiers staying in hotels near downtown in Rutland, VT will be on the slopes all day and available for dining and shopping late in the day and early evening. But, if the shops are not open….
  • In Long Island City, NY, the guests at the new cluster of hotels are primarily tourists who will spend much of the day and substantial portions of the evening in Manhattan. As a result, the best time for local merchants to capture their dollars may be in the morning.

The Retailers’ Expectation That Customers Come to Them. The problems of accessing these market segments potentially can be overcome, but that will require merchants to implement targeted operating procedures such as altering store hours or, most importantly, reaching out and interacting in some way with these potential shoppers in their offices, schools, hotels, factories, etc.

Unfortunately, many of today’s merchants have been acculturated to expect that their customers will come to them.

Overcoming This Impasse. Merchants can have vastly greater success with these captive daytime downtown market segments if they adopt the multichannel techniques that are detailed in my recent DANTH Research Paper which is available at no cost at:http://danth.com/storage/pdf/Multichannel.pdf .

I do not want to again go over here the ideas presented in that paper, save for this: the key change is that a real multichannel strategy guides and enables downtown merchants to interact with customers away from the brick and mortar stores. If they are to win more sales dollars from their district’s captive markets, that is precisely what they have to do.

 

[i] Bill Ryan and Jangik Jin,  “Employment in Small City Downtowns,” Downtown Economics, Issue 174, October 2011  http://bit.ly/y1bkc2

 

 

Update on the Reassessment of Our Use of Social Media

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I am now on LinkedIn and, as I suspected, I can see its utility and regret not having signed up before. But, it takes quite a bit of time to figure out what your profile should look like and then make it so. Next on my agenda is to figure out which groups to join and how my participation in them can benefit DANTH,Inc and still be fun for me.


Ben Burgess, of the NorthStar Group in Annapolis, MD, is leading us through our reassessment and he quickly suggested that I get on Twitter. This astonished me because, of all the social media, I held Twitter in the lowest esteem and saw little likelihood of ever using it. Perhaps, that was because, in my curmudgeonly way, I saw tweets as being constant electronic intrusions sent by total narcissists who thought that the the world’s population had an abiding interest in where they were, who they were with, and every single thing they did (including their body functions). However, Ben pointed out that my view of tweeting was somewhat jaundiced, and that it could be a much easier and effective way for me to leverage something that I have habitually done for years.

I do a lot of research on the Internet and almost daily come across a piece of information or an article that I want to share with people I know and/or work with. This behavior feels like a natural  way of sharing with them, but it is also a good marketing tool that can maintain and build key professional (and personal) relationships. Ben convinced me to also send these articles out via Twitter. Let’s see how many followers I attract by June 1st.

I signed up to follow Richard Florida on Twitter. Always an interesting guy. But, he tweets so often that I expect his thumbs may have shriveled from so much use on his smartphone’s keyboard. I’ll never tweet as often as he does. Nor do I want to.

Next week we will be looking into Facebook and YouTube. I actually have been wanting to use YouTube for several years. I always take photos of downtowns when I do my consulting assignments and when we just travel because I find them invaluable tools in my work. But, ever since Flip, the small pocketable camcorder, appeared on the market, I have wanted to start using short movies instead of the still photos. The movies can capture the essential dynamic qualities of a downtown that the simple photo usually cannot — at least, in my hands. Moviemaking, takes time to learn and I felt I lacked the needed time. But, I am probably wrong about that, too — I see teenagers and even my 7-year old grandson making short movies on their cameras.

Facebook, is another story of me feeling uneasy. I see it as requiring duplication of the work I put into our website and my blog, while having enormous privacy problems. Let’s see whether this old curmudgeon can learn new tricks about it, too.



  

Downtown Multichannel Retailing

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DANTH, Inc. has just released a research paper I wrote on downtown multichannel retailing.  I prefer to think of it as backdoor retailing, with electronic and non-electronic variations. In any case, the topic is important because downtown retailing is undergoing an enormous change — one that will not be reversed even when the economy recovers from our Great Recession — towards multichannel/backdoor retailing. Downtown merchants and leaders who do not adapt to this new paradigm will be left behind, more dross produced by capitalism’s creative destruction.


You can download a free copy of the research paper at: 
http://danth.com/storage/pdf/Multichannel.pdf

N. David Milder