Customer Reviews

Marketing Your Retail Store in the Internet Age

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bob and Susan Negen have put together an excellent book on how to "do" retail. The book is laid out in four "steps".

Getting new customers

Turning first-time buyers into regular customers

Getting customers to shop more often

Keeping customers for life


It may seem simplistic, but it's often the simple things that trip us up. Any retailer or any other business for that matter that can execute the four steps consistently and well is sure to be a success. Bob and Susan provide practical, proven "tactics" to do just that. This stuff would work just as well for dentists or barber shops as it does for retailers.

While the title might suggest that this is a book about internet marketing, tactics are described as either "Low-Tech" or "High-Tech". For example, "donut marketing", taking donuts to neighboring non-competing businesses who are in a position to send customers your way is about as low-tech as you can get. It's something that's been used successfully for as long as there have been sales people and donuts. The question is, do you do it? There are a lot of tips like that in this book.

The thing that sets this book apart from many similar books is that it's practical. You can read about a tactic in the morning and actually be making money using it in the afternoon. This is not an academic book. It's like a cookbook for retail merchandising and marketing.

The book is well laid out. You can read it from cover to cover, which is what I did, in a couple of evenings, or you can use it as a reference book, cherry-picking the various tactics.

Unless you buy the book and throw it into a drawer without reading it, you'll recover its cost many times over if you just adopt a few of its suggestions.

I'm not a retailer but I work with them daily. In researching an article about e-mail marketing for retailers, I looked for books like this, but found very few good ones. Two months later a review copy of this book came my way from the authors. It was just the book I had been seeking but not finding.

It's written for an audience of small or midsized independent business owners, and the examples show that the authors have a lot of experience working with this type of client. The book offers a good mix of general principles to bear in mind ("The real value in a customer comes after the first transaction") and very specific, practical suggestions that retailers of all types will be able to quickly apply or adapt to their businesses.

I also like that it's not TOO narrowly focused on using the Internet for marketing. It's a full-service marketing book that also covers well the important areas of websites and e-mail. The authors break most sections up into "key concepts," "low tech tactics" (i.e. non-Internet) and "high tech tactics."

It's also current, of course. Books that talk about the Internet become dated rather quickly (all the books I looked sounded archaic if they were more than 12 months old.) This one reflects today's marketplace and technological landscape. It's impossible to say how quickly it will become dated, but since it's not exclusively about the Internet, most of it should remain useful and insightful even if e-commerce continues to evolve in surprising ways.

I was particularly interested in the high-tech angle, feeling that many small retailers still don't know exactly how to get started with email marketing or how to take it up a notch. This book does a great job of starting with the basics (which more advanced readers can skip) and moving on to fairly sophisticated suggestions. Same with the section on websites. After all, even among small retailers, there's a range of technical ability and comfort level, but I think most retailers will find many great ideas somewhere in the book.

The authors also use a kind of coding or rating system to help a retailer quickly indentify ideas that fit with his or her style and budget. Three scales--time, money and relationship-building--indicated by simple icons, show what each suggestion will require or provide. One idea might be inexpensive but takes lots of time and builds customer relationships well. Another (such as placing a newspaper ad) might be expensive, take little time, and have little "payoff" in terms of providing a personal customer relationship. I like this way of visually portraying what goes into and results from a particular suggestion.

If you're a retailer who wants to get more out of your marketing budget, or who needs some convincing that effective marketing can make a difference, I recommend this book. It's a much smaller investment than another ad buy and it might have a much higher ROI in the long run.

I have owned an Internet Technology company for the past 7 years and this is THE BEST information I have found on marketing your retail store on the Internet. If you want to succeed....BUY THIS BOOK! We have contacted Bob and Susan and plan on sharing the information in this book with all our customers. Thanks for the incredible info guys!

As a new brick and mortar cosmetics store I am always looking for ways to market and save money. Some days it seems like more people come in to my store wanting me to advertise then want to shop. This book helped put my marketing plans into order with tons of ideas. It was easy to read and understand while offering information that I will be able to put into acton tomorrow.

Simply put, this book is a must-have for any business owner interested in growing their business. This is real-world information that really works. The ideas are fresh and fun, written by real retail owners. This book will pay for itself immediately.

Even though I have my website listed as #1 on all the major search engines I thought this book might be of help. After reading the book, I realized that I had done almost exactly what was prescribed in the book. It is really good advice and everyone building their own website needs to know this information before starting. Professional website designers and builders would be well advised by purchasing and reading this book also. The small price you pay is nothing compared to the price you would spend otherwise trying to get top listing in the search engines. It also has advice on other types of advertising that can really save you money. I highly recommend this book because it takes you through the entire process of business building.

Marketing Your Reatail Store in the Internet Age does a lot of things just right.

It puts people into the right frame of mind so they can develop a "Marketer's Mindset." It outlines key concepts that are the foundation of smart business decisions. And it provides actual, realistic, easy to understand techniques that can be implemented starting immediately (and gives real life examples and case studies to help you apply the techniques to your business).

There's a goldmine within these pages, and because of the simple, user-friendly way it's laid out, you won't have much trouble finding it. Great book!

I'm a new retailer that has been devouring all books to learn more about marketing, visual merchandising, etc. This book provided straight, simple no nonsense marketing ideas. It was an incredibly easy read (I read the whole thing in about a day). I will be using a great deal of their ideas to draw customers to my own business.

Thank you for the great wealth of information. I read this over a course of a few days and now will reread to get more tips out of it, that pertain to my type of business. I have already started the $5 gift certificate and have put a expiration date on them, so they don't sit out there to long and they return within 2 weeks of coming in the last time. I am also doing a certificate of $5 with a friend for both! Just to see which one does better, as most of the time, the $$$ goes up in sales when the girls bring their friends.

I have probably handed out about 25 to 50 and and have had 4 come back in already! I have had one buy only a $7 item, the other 3 bought over $50 of products. So far, so good!

Thanks again for the great book!

I just finished reading this book and my head is now swimming with ideas! Even as an experienced marketing professional, this book gave me both new ideas and reminders of old ones I'd forgotten about! It's easy to read and has many step-by-step, easy-to-implement marketing ideas. I'd recommend it to anyone with a small business or event.