Increasing your customer base means increasing the amount of new customers who come to your store. This post will teach you 3 evergreen advertising methods you can use in your liquor store to stay competitive locally.
There are 3 main types of advertising that will increase your customer base the most efficiently.
1. Bus-stop or "Big-spend" advertising
2. Local paper advertising
3. Online advertising
Bus-Stop Advertising:
You may be surprised by the price of bus-stop advertising in your area. We are certainly surprised by the amount of business owners who don’t have a clue how much it costs. It’s just a phone call conversation away!
In New York, on Long Island, we pay about $400 a month per bus-stop advertisement (as of January 2020).
This includes the graphic design work and all the work involved getting the physical advertisement on the bus-stop.
Bus-stop advertising is a GREAT idea unless maybe another local liquor store is already doing bus-stop advertising in your area.
Otherwise, it has the potential of bringing in thousands of NEW customers on a monthly basis who might have otherwise not come in (or known that your store exists).
So, the way to make your bus-stop advertising the most cost-efficient is to have a strong reason for potential customers to stop by your store on their way, or for them to order online.
As a matter of fact, we were very surprised at Pike’s Wine & Liquor with the amount of customers who came in after we had started our bus-stop advertising. They told us through our cashiers that, for example, they had been commuting to and from work on the same road for five years and they had never actually noticed that our store was right there where it is.
Most advertising companies that we’ve contacted don’t require a serious long-term contract and many are more than happy to let you test it out for one month in the beginning. Obviously, you can get a better rate with the advertising company if you sign up for longer.
Definitely try this out because it can cost you maybe $500 to try out for the first month, not that much time, not that much work involved but it can bring in many new customers. And as long as these new people like what they see when they are in your store, they will remain customers.
***NOTE: Consider whether or not your store is physically visible from the same street that the bus-stop advertising is on! But even if it’s not, there are plenty of ways you can inform the potential buyer to make a right turn at the next light for example. You will know exactly where the physical bus-stop is when you purchase that. So be creative; that that bus-stop is not moving any time soon.***
Lastly, keep in mind that when a person sees your liquor store and your liquor store’s logo on a bus-stop, this gives you huge credibility points! They will have an instant, innate trust for your business because, well, you’re on a bus-stop advertisement. Most people will assume that you must be somewhat successful and not some rip off liquor store.
Local Paper Advertising:
This is another great source of local customers who might not know that your store exists.
Chances are high that a representative from a local paper or a local advertising distribution company has already come to you and offered you some kind of deal to advertisement, if not, it’s really easy to find (chances are you sent them away thinking it’s a waste of time and money or a scam…)
Companies like Prime Time, for example, on Long Island or whatever it is in your area rely on businesses like yours to advertise with them. They are usually open to negotiation and will hold your hand through the process. It’s a quick Google search away!
Search for your town’s name, for example, Elmont and ‘local advertisement’ or just look at your mail that you get. You may throw out all the junk that comes like coupons and stuff but trust me there are thousands of people in every community who actually look at that stuff and take advantage of those deals.
Plenty of stores, liquor stores specifically, are already advertising with these companies so chances are that there’s somebody at the company who’s already made templates or advertisements for liquor stores. Feel free to use a generic template that seems to work. Here is a picture of one of our recent ads.
Online Advertising:
Advertising online has never been more popular than it is in 2021! This is always changing and the people who know how to advertise online well are the people who can scale businesses!
If you want to learn about online advertising for your store you can hire Alex Flasinski or - google Total Wine & More. If you haven’t heard of them yet, well I’m pretty surprised, but they’re the largest chain of liquor stores in the world and they have huge amounts of advertising and their email campaigns are top of the line - which makes sense as it’s a freaking huge company.
