The labor market is crazy. Businesses who cannot hire and retain quality employees are facing a lot of strain. Big businesses are not immune. In fact, they may be struggling on an scale as large as they are. I may be working too hard to find a silver lining in all of this, but...I think there is real opportunity for small business marketing to leverage some of the labor chaos to their advantage.
Let me share with you an experience I had last week.
I had planned to do a hike last Saturday morning. There was rain in the forecast, and it was a long hike. I wanted to get started early. I headed out the door at around 10 a.m. (early for me is not the same as early for most). My plan was to make a quick stop for a breakfast sandwich from a fast food joint. That’s where the chaos began.
Stop number one (that should be a clue how this all went) was a drive thru burger place. The car in front of me sat there for roughly 5 minutes without even hearing from anyone inside of the restaurant. Eventually, they gave up. I pulled up to the speaker and waited. And waited. And waited. Until, eventually I gave up too. As I pulled away, I saw no signs of life in the drive thru window.
On to the next stop: a hugely popular coffee shop. Naturally, they had a super long line of cars waiting in their drive thru. After assessing the situation, I decided to head inside the shop to place my order. At least I thought I would. When I got to the door, I was greeted by a sign saying that their cafe area wasn’t open. This was a new development. Their indoor seating has been open on multiple visits I have made over the past few months.
Two stops later, after giving up on another long drive thru line, I had hit my rock bottom. I was in a gas station searching for a precooked, reheated, sitting under the warmer lights version of breakfast. That too, was a bust. There was only one employee working and an entire truck’s worth of boxes on the sales floor waiting to be put away. I knew there was no chance I was getting my sausage biscuit on this day.
By now, my already late start to getting out early was even further off schedule.
This is where I see opportunity for smaller businesses to capitalize on the labor chaos.
I am sure I am not the only person out there experiencing this kind of frustration. We take for granted how easy and convenient shopping for things can be. Routine transactions are now becoming drawn out, difficult experiences. It’s not just the breakfast sandwich market that is suffering, either. Consumers are getting flustered by the experiences they are having in retail shopping and big box stores too.
The experience of shopping at what were once reliable, big brand outlets is getting worse and worse as the labor shortages continue. The shortage of quality workers is creating too much strain in these retail giants. Many stores don’t have enough workers to handle the volume of transactions that they are used to. Nor are there enough people working to cover the long hours these places remain open for. The employees that are working are too stressed out and exhausted to deliver a good customer experience.
A small business, with a savvy marketing plan, can take advantage of the inability of their larger competitors to deliver.
Show people that you can deliver a better, higher quality experience.
Differentiating your business from your competitors has always been an important part of small business marketing. Right now, the big guys are struggling to keep up the quality of the shopping experience. Small businesses can capitalize on this. By putting out a message that highlights how much better shopping with you can be, you can lure weary customers from the big businesses in your area.
Your small business’s marketing should be tailor made to attract the growing amount of disaffected shoppers who are looking for alternatives to the lousy experiences they are having in today’s marketplaces.
- Share reviews that rave about how wonderful the experience of shopping with you is. This type of user generated content builds a sense of trust in your business.
- Draw distinctions between shopping with the big guys (long lines, crabby workers, unreliable shopping experience) and shopping at your business (no lines, pleasant staff, great shopping environment).
- Use your employees (and yourself) in your marketing materials. Having a personal touch will foster a feeling of authenticity.
- Be sincere about what you can do for your customers. Let your audience know exactly what you can do to help them and make their experience memorable.
If you build it, they will come.
An overlooked, but extremely useful tool for getting the word out about the wonderful qualities of your business is a Google My Business profile. More specifically, a complete and well thought out Google My Business profile. Your Google My Business profile can be the tipping point for a consumer looking for alternatives to the big guys.
Your Google My Business profile is more than just a listing that shares your location, phone number and hours: it’s a powerful small business marketing tool. A thorough Google My Business profile can contain a wealth of information: the kind of information that truly make your business stand out. Some of that information, but not all, is provided by your customers in the form of reviews and photos taken at your business. There is, however, also plenty of opportunity for you to also contribute to the listing.
Here’s a quick look at the kinds of information that ought to be included in your Google My Business listing.
- Accurate hours: This might seem pretty obvious. There are, however, reasons to keep an eye on the hours you list on your Google My Business profile. Maybe you’ve had to cut down your hours because of a staffing shortage. Conversely, you may have expanded hours for the holiday season. Whatever the reason, you can make temporary changes to your normal business hours in your profile. Don’t let down your customers by being closed when they arrive.
- Photos/videos of your business and it’s products: People love to see how things look before they leave the house. Rather than relying on your customers to post pictures in their reviews, capture photos or video of the parts of your business that you want highlighted and post it yourself.
- Menus: This one is a particular pet peeve of mine. When I look through listings of restaurants, find one that fits my criteria, and click on their profile; I get immediately turned off if I don’t see a menu. Worse yet is when the only menu listing is a set of really lousy, unreadable pictures of the actual physical menu. Take the extra time to enter your menu items into your profile. It will be worth the effort.
- Replies to the reviews and the questions about your business: If a customer takes the time to write up a review, give them a response. Even, or especially, the bad reviews. People will take the time to see what you have to say. If you handle your reply well, they will give you some grace. The same goes for any questions that might be submitted. Your reply could be the thing that gets the potential customer to walk through your doors.
There’s more, of course. But if you get those few things right, you’re well on your way to improving your small business marketing and being able to draw in a new crowd of fans to your business.
It’s your time to shine.
Consumers often take for granted that the big names can deliver what they want, when they want it, and always in the easiest possible way. More and more consumers are now finding out that that isn’t always the case. Your small business can do things that your largest competitors can’t. If you position yourself as the smart alternative to the floundering big box experience, your small business has a chance to win over a growing contingent of weary consumers.