While location is not the three most important things in marketing, it is important.
I’ve written about geographical location for one’s marketing efforts, about billboard location and referred to the importance of location for your trade show booth.
How about location for your office or store?
Of course convenience for your prospective customers is huge. That’s not only in terms of time and distance from where they live and work, but easy access from highway exits, left turn lanes, parking, etc.
But store or office location is also a MARKETING point.
To give a favorite example, a client of mine had a stained glass door and window business. It was located on a very busy road, which thousands of commuters used to go to and from work every day. It was also a few hundred feet back from a light where traffic would back up for blocks at rush hour. The owner put a lot of work into their window displays, including paying for keeping them lit up at night.
Year in and year out, 30% of their business came from people who would walk in saying “I’ve been driving by for years and now I need a new door.”
Another example of the way location itself can pay off is the trend towards competing businesses to be located near each other. You see this in auto dealerships where within a few blocks of each other, you can see many many different makes. So people will drive from farther away than usual, knowing they can go from one dealer to another, comparing looks, prices and features until they find what they want.
I know a place where three jewelry store chains all have branches located within about one block of each other. I guarantee they each benefit from the others’ proximity.
I do my business banking at one bank, personal at another. They have branches right across the street from each other, 5 blocks from my office. Convenient!
Interesting, eh?