Here’s an example website plan for a kid’s consignment store. With about 150 local searches in Knoxville, TN there is definite potential to capture quite a few new customers with this one.
First, a review of the competitiion. Searching for the broader term - Knoxville consignment - brings up about 700 results, not counting the supplemental or additional results. While that may seem like a lot of competition, it is actually fairly easy to get a first page ranking with any term with these kinds of terms.
How could a children’s consignment shop use a website? Obviously we would want to include things like hours, location and direction. Adding consignment policies and information for new consigners would be helpful, saving time repeating the same information to people day after day.
From a marketing standpoint we also want to add a form to capture visitors contact information for a newsletter mailing list. Services like Aweber make setting up and maintaining a list easy. Once we have permission to send information to these targeted prospects we can periodically follow up with news about sales, new items, season changes, etc. Adding a note to your receipt directing your current customers to your new website will help jump-start your list.
Of course this is just the start of a larger marketing plan. Getting found by people who are actively seeking for you and setting up a system to follow up is a simple way to increase sales without a large advertising budget. Creating newsworthy events, partnering with other businesses and working with other children’s businesses are also important aspects to consider.
If your are looking for a way to improve your children’s consignment shop or other retail business contact me at 865-973-0328. We’ll get together to talk about what options are right for you.