Marketing Your Retail Store in the Internet Age Hardcover - 2006 - 1st Edition

From the jacket flap

There's Good news, & there's bad news....

The bad news is that as an independent store owner, your competition is fierce and getting fiercer. Never before have there been so many companies from around the globe fighting for the dollars in your local customers' pockets. They sell the same kinds of merchandise you sell. They spend millions on advertising. They have the power to negotiate super-low prices that you can't. It's enough to give you a massive headache.

Fortunately, there is good news! As an independent store owner, you have the single most powerful marketing tool imaginable at your disposal and it's one that the big boys can never beat you at, no matter how hard they try. Your biggest competitive advantage is that you can have a genuine, personal relationship with your customers, but the big boys can't.

In Marketing Your Retail Store in the Internet Age, Bob and Susan Negen show you how to use innovative, inexpensive marketing techniques to create new customer relationships and do more with the customers you already have. Using both time-honored, low-tech tactics and new, high-tech marketing ideas, the Negens adapt the best of what worked for mom and pop and expand it for the twenty-first century. You'll learn:

• Why traditional advertising doesn't work for independent retailers and what you can do about it
• How to put the "rule of reciprocity" into play and attract tons of new, loyal customers
• Fourteen key elements you must have when building your Web site
• The secret to making e-mail your best, cheapest, and easiest marketing tool ever
• Ten copywriting rules that every retailer must know in order to write messages that sell
• How to create promotions that keep your customers coming back and buying more

Marketing Your Retail Store in the Internet Age puts more than twenty years of real-life retail experience in your hands. Retail is a tough and competitive business, but you can offer something the big boys can't--personal service and real customer relationships. Follow the advice in this practical, effective guide and turn the personal touch into competitive advantage.