{"id":3410,"date":"2017-12-13T15:27:49","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T15:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/lavie\/?p=3410"},"modified":"2017-12-13T15:27:49","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T15:27:49","slug":"why-we-buy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/2017\/12\/13\/why-we-buy\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Buy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>My father runs a small local shop back home, and since I\u2019ve been in college I\u2019ve been helping him run it each summer to build my experience and my resume. This past summer, we started looking at his advertising and marketing strategy, and we both realized we don\u2019t know a ton about how that stuff works. I don\u2019t think my father has done much on his own in the time since I\u2019ve been back on campus, and I\u2019d love to come back next summer with some ideas on how he could improve his marketing strategy. What can the experts tell me about how marketing works and what sorts of strategies work for small businesses?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Answer: Marketing is key for businesses of all sizes–and the proof is all around us. We\u2019re being marketed to constantly, though we don\u2019t always know it. It\u2019s easy to recognize the television advertisements and billboards that small businesses and big companies alike rely on to reach consumers, but marketing works in more subtle ways. \u201cGuerilla marketing\u201d uses nontraditional methods to grab our attention. Breweries, restaurants, and pop culture franchises convince us to pay for the privilege of wearing their advertising on our clothing. And have you ever seen a stack of stickers at the counter of a small shop? Marketers say <\/span>die cut stickers offer valuable exposure for businesses<\/span><\/a> when customers stick them on everything from their own property to surfaces in public spaces.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it doesn\u2019t stop there. Marketing goes on even within stores themselves. <\/span>The designers at Megawall make specialty fixtures for product displays<\/span><\/a>, so they\u2019ll be the first to tell you that presentation matters. Grocery stores know that the \u201cend caps\u201d–displays at the end of aisles–are the most valuable real estate in the store and <\/span>can boost sales by nearly a third<\/span><\/a>. And big box stores track the movement of customers and develop methods for shuttling us from display to display, ensuring that we\u2019re always being marketed to–even when we\u2019re already in the store!<\/span><\/p>\n

Your father\u2019s small business may not have the resources that big companies do. Target or Walmart can try different ads in different regions, lay out different stores in different ways, or pay for two totally different online marketing plans–all just to determine which ones work best for the future. Smaller businesses can\u2019t do all of that, but they can rely on outsourced marketing services that can replicate some of the scale advantages of big businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Small businesses are following in big business\u2019 footsteps in other ways, too. Big companies have been at war for real estate on the search engine results pages of Google and its competitors for some time now. But with the rise of mobile devices and local <\/span>searches–nearly 60% of Google searches are performed on a mobile device<\/span><\/a>, and Google prioritizes local results for relevant mobile searches–search engine optimization (\u201cSEO\u201d) has become increasingly important for small businesses, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Modernizing a marketing strategy for a small business in this day and age involves a lot of online work, and SEO is perhaps the single biggest game changer. Other key ideas include a website that\u2019s optimized for mobile viewing and a visible social media presence. Your father\u2019s small business may not be able to market to its customers in all of the ways that big businesses can, but with a great web presence, it can market to its customers wherever they are.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBusiness has only two functions–marketing and innovation.\u201d — Milan Kundera<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question:\u00a0\u00a0My father runs a small local shop back home, and since I\u2019ve been in college I\u2019ve been helping him run it each summer to build my experience and my resume. This past summer, we started […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-campus-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}