Marketing Advice Needed?

[Stephanie]

I own a small child-centered business in PA. We have been open a little over a month and have had quite a bit of success with our marketing, but we are still lacking the amount of traffic I would expect. Thus far we have been featured on every local network's evening news, done radio commercials, created accounts on Twitter and Facebook, posted on Craigslist several times, distributed print materials to community bulletin boards and pediatrician's offices, published online articles, posted on blogs, created a website, offered giveaways, and created business partnerships throughout the community. Next month we will be featured in a local coupon magazine. Our business website is http://tinytoestoys.com. If anyone has some solid advice for getting more traffic through the doors it would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Varasamy S]

You seem to have covered a lot of the bases, so I must commend you for that.

When I used to be a consultant, I would suggest my clients go to a school and donate some products for a school fundraiser. In return for this, the school allows you to include coupons or special offers in a flyer announcing the fundraiser. You might even be able to be invited to the fundraiser night or dinner and promote your company.

You can deduct the cost of the donation and flyer production as business expenses, as well as your traveling cost to/from the school premises.

[Jake]

Is that a lack of foot or website traffic?

Have you tried press releases, there are a number of free distribution services, though the big paid one prweb.com? beats all the freebies, an announcement might cost like $70.

You know pay per click advertising can be geo targeted, so only web surfers roughly with in a certain radius see the paid ad., helping to only get pad traffic that counts, I'm guessing there's not much budget for paid site visits.

Perhaps you can make an ecology tie-in, getting the maximum life out of toys, not discarding them for simply being outgrown.

Donating toys to needy oversees kids, makes good press, perhaps seeding a sister program elsewhere.

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[john]

More than 80% of people use search engines to research a purchase, especially when looking for a local store. I couldn't find your site listed in Google Maps and that's one of the main places where your prospective clients will be looking for your store.

Go to Website Grader and enter your website address to get some good advice on making your site more search engine friendly. I have also published a free white paper that gives you instructions on how to list your business on the major search engines.

Best of Luck,

- John