You’re opening a retail business, selling direct to the consumer, and you are looking for a physical location. What are some of the things you need to consider? How do you choose one location over another? Which criteria should weigh heavier? You’ve heard the old saying of: “Location, Location, Location”, but what does that mean, exactly? One of the biggest decisions you make, after the decision to start a business, is where to locate your business.
There are many possible locations for a retail business. You could locate it in a shopping mall, a strip mall, a free standing building, or in a business district. You can lease the space, purchase or sublet it. What you choose can be based on several different factors, so let’s talk about some of those factors.
Many people have a limited budget, so they look for an affordable location. Once they have found two or three locations that are within their budget, they pick the best of the bunch and move on from there. Others may not have budget restrictions, but have a particular location in mind that they always thought would be a good place to put a business. Regardless of where you are starting, how do you choose a location?
Start with your customer. Once you define who your customer or customers are, half of the battle is won. If you are thinking, that’s easy, anyone could be my customer, then you have some work to do.
You cannot market to the parents of teenagers the same way you would market to a single person. You cannot market to a person in their 20’s the same way you would market to a person in their 60’s. You have to choose the person who is MOST LIKELY to purchase your product.
Even if you have a restaurant, you still cannot have everyone as your customer. If you make your restaurant family friendly, then professionals looking for a place to have a business dinner with a client will not be your customer. (If you are trying to close a business deal, you don’t want a 3-year-old next to you having a temper tantrum. Your client can provide the drama.) In addition, your marketing message, and where you place that message, would be different if you are targeting families as opposed to corporate executives.
So, again, start with your customer. Create a profile for each of your customers that includes, gender, age, marital status, income, education, the number of children, the age of the children, etc. As much information as you can pull together. If you need help, go to your browser search box and look for how to create a customer profile.
Let’s take a computer store as an example. If you sell computers, you could consider who purchases computers according to their use. There are those ‘gamers’ who are mostly using their computer to play online games, there are those who will use their computer for their business, there are mothers who buy computers for their children to complete homework assignments, and there are those who purchase computers for general use, such as getting on Facebook and sending and receiving email.
These people have different interests and you would approach them differently if they came into your store. The ‘gamer’ would be looking for a powerful computer. A stay-at-home mom purchasing a computer for her grade school child to do homework would want a computer that is easy to set up. A business person would want to be assured that the computer would include certain basic software and be able to support their business software. You won’t sell to them the same way so you cannot market to them the same way.
Now that you know who you are selling to, we need to go out and find them. We’ll talk about that next time.
Dispatches From The Front 