That’s a Burning Question for sure. Ask any consignment, resale or thrift shopkeeper, and chances are the answer will be
Is a billboard for you? It could be.
Word of mouth and Facebook.
While both of these are valid avenues for getting your shop’s name out there, they are
simply not enough.
Word of mouth is, natch, the MOST effective way to get new customers… (after all, everyone believes a friend’s recommendation 1000 times more than an advertisement or a commercial) BUT it is not a form of advertising. Unless and until you do something, advertising-wise, that will INSTIGATE word of mouth.
Who talks about the perfectly pleasant little shop they know? Nope, they talk about your silver-painted ceiling or the outrageous displays you put together or the fact that when you ask them to keep an eye out for fuchsia jeans in your size… they ACTUALLY contact you! Or the Ladies Night Out or some other in-store promotional event you have been letting people know is coming up. Or the clever TV commercial you run.
And Facebook has been the “mom and pop business saver” for a few years now: It’s FREE! It works! Everyone who’s anyone sees your posts!
Except of course, it ain’t.
It ain’t free (unless you want it to be; I’ve seen shops who suggest you spend $40 a day…. that’s $14,600 a year… “promoting” your posts to an audience who may or may not be motivated to actually walk into your shop or purchase something from you online)
It doesn’t work… IF by work you mean expanding the awareness of your business to a wider reach in your community (it does work, of course, for reminding the people who already love your shop, but attrition is a very real issue here)
And we all are increasingly aware that our posts, no matter how lovingly or hastily crafted, are seen by a mere fraction of those who “like” us… and by NONE of the people who can’t be bothered with watching FB or other social media
So what does that leave the small, local, mostly B&M shop to do, to advertise?
There’s papers (if your locale reads them) and magazines (ditto)
and email and direct (snail) mail
and bag-stuffers and signage
and sponsorship of local events
and press releases (if those papers and mags still exist)
and local bloggers
and TV and radio
and billboards and t-shirts
and skywriting.
And informative brochures customers might take home (“How to Remove Stains brought to you by MyShop”) or share with co-workers “How to Consign for Fun & Profit at MyShop”)
And handing out business cards at the slightest excuse and giving your staffers their own with instructions to do the same.
And writing a blog/ keeping your web site up-to-date so that, if you DO catch the eye of the FBer, she MIGHT click through and learn more about your business in a space you’ve created.
Facebook has saved many a small shop’s rear in the last few difficult years, but it is not the end-all and be-all of promoting your shop. Don’t put all your apples in the Facebook basket. Ask any of the shops you know (probably through Facebook!) who are going out of business. I’m betting that
they thought their Facebook page would be enough. It wasn’t.
For more on advertising your consignment, resale or thrift shop, here’s what Auntie Kate says about advertising.
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
I agree that there is not ONE thing you can do that will bring people into your store. When we first started, newspaper advertising was the magic bullet. We spent about $1,000 per month for the first four years. Our sales tripled the first few months and went up from there. People looked forward to our ads, and even men commented on how they liked to look at our ads and tell their wives about them. However things change: 1. each year the ad rate rate went up from 20 to 25% 2. The demographic of the readership was getting older and was not our ideal customer profile, AND THE BIG ONE, 3. cell phone adoption, especially smart phones, was exploding. Who reads a newspaper anymore, but more importantly you can now shop directly on your phone. And venture capitalists were happy to fund a whole new collection of online consignment companies, such as Thread Up, Real Real, etc.
Facebook used to be free, but that changed also. However, I believe that it is still a good investment if done properly. It is hard to track exactly what our response is, but anecdotally we are getting strong feedback. People come into the store every day and say they saw us on Facebook, or they ask for something we just posted. We also get people going out of their way to compliment us on our Facebook posts and how much they like them.
The main thing though is that everything is changing all the time and you simply can not keep doing the same thing advertising/marketing things and stay in business. You have to keep trying new things and know that most of them will not work well. But don’t give up, because the few that do work well will be worth the effort. AND, the ones that don’t work will inform you of what might work better.
And this last point is what I think is the greatest gift that Auntie Kate continues to give all of us: keep going, trying new things, staying positive and as they used to say, “Roll with the punches!”
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Thanks, Dwight, for your analysis, and the point that learning how to reach potential clientele is an ongoing process! My biggest concern for my consultees, now in 2016….almost 2017!… is that some shopkeepers feel that FB is the only way to communicate, never realizing that there are many other ways, and that FB is scarcely perfect 🙂 for advertising and reaching established and new customers.
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The best advertisement our Chicago nonprofit resale shop has gotten has been FREE and not even written by me – YELP. But, I’ve learned since managing the store almost since its inception, that you have to use many different avenues of advertising to get people in the door. All of ours have been free, b/c we couldn’t afford advertising initially, but now that we can, we still don’t buy any.
We mainly put furniture on Craigslist, Apartment Therapy Classifieds and Ebay Classifieds. The latter two have yielded little success.
We do FB, and have dabbled in Twitter and Instagram.
We make our windows look great to attract passersby, which is quite effective. We offer a student and teacher discount of 10%, which enabled us to be posted on a large nearby university’s website page that lists all the discounts available to its students.
We sent a few informal press releases when the store first opened, and got brief articles in 3 small neighborhood newspapers – didn’t garner much.
We regularly get people who come in because their roommate, spouse, friend, partner, coworker, parent, etc. told them to come to our shop.
We participated in 2 silent auctions, one of which wasn’t fruitful, and the other which was.
As I keep telling my boss, there is no magic bullet – he thinks Craigslist is
because it was his idea.
I think you have to work on the people walking past your shop, by making nice windows; social media/internet presence (Yelp, CL work well); and the atmosphere of the store – customer service and displays – to create WOM. Those three things done well together are what I work on to create the best advertising for our store.
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Heidi, so wise of you to use… and evaluate… as many avenues to get the shop noticed as you can! One question: since you are a non-profit, have you explored the avenues available there… e.g. “Happenings” calendar in local papers to promo your specific events, PSAs on local media, invited local bloggers whose “mission” involves using what you sell or helping your cause in for a visit/ photo op?
LOVE the idea of the student/teacher discount to get your shop listed on the university site!
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I am unable to open anything on your post to read it, and I am very interested in this subject matter. Can you please help?
Thanks!
Sherry
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Hi Sherry, sorry for whatever glitch you’re experiencing and thanks for your interest. Here are the links within my message. Perhaps they will help? This is the link to our Product, 229 Promotional Events Especially for Resale: http://tgtbt.com/shopgrow.htm#13 and here’s the link to all of the Auntie Kate posts tagged “advertising.” https://auntiekate.wordpress.com/tag/advertising/
If anyone else cannot access my links, let me know. Also, let me know what browser and device you are using.
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