As a keen guitarist I am a common visitor to a family managed music retailer nearby, writes John King. I became interested to hear the owner talk about the challenges met by local retailers and exactly how he confronted those challenges.

The owner has run the store for over 15 years and, like a number of other people in his position, he loves to believe that there's not many (if any) new methods that he could be taught which may significantly boost his business.

As yet he'd always depended on an excellent location plus a dependable (and well-heeled) customer-base to provide a solid grounding for the business to thrive - the few advertising and marketing campaigns that he had got involved with (eg leafleting & nearby press advertising) have turned out to be highly unsatisfactory and expensive.

However, he brought up how he was recently offered some short-term space in one of the main shopping malls in his area which adjoins his store, and decided to set up a 2 day display and promotional event manned by himself and one other employee.

They built an eye-catching, interesting display (relatively straight-forward in their business!) and put to use a free prize-draw competition (acoustic guitar and accessories) to aid initial contact with passing clients.

Additionally they focused on advertising the many services which they offered (instrument rental, guitar and other instrument repairs, recording studio, guitar tuition, website with local links etc.) by producing various A5 sized leaflets which passers-by could take.

The promotion took place on a Friday and Saturday and, since they were featuring lots of electric guitars, keyboards etc at greatly reduced prices, he mentioned that he most certainly estimated a lot better than average product sales for the 2 days….

As expected, their turnover was outstanding - three times the average for the2 days - which, though very welcome, would by itself have been no more than a handy method to clear some extra stock at very low profit margins. What he didn't count on (and this is the real bonus ) was that they would secure so many new customers because of this event - despite the fact that their marketing occasion occurred no more 20 metres from their shop. He was astounded by how many people they chatted to who had no idea that they existed and have since been in to visit us and make purchases!

So, what could they learn from this?

What this happy experience has really driven home is that:

1) No matter how long your enterprise has been established and how great your location may be, the percentage of long-term nearby residents who sadly are totally unaware of your store's existence is simply way higher than you believe!

2) Traditional promotional methods such as paper advertising and leafleting are nowhere near as powerful as 'coming out from behind the counter' and taking your business directly to the shopper. Nowadays Town Centre Operators will bend over backwards to help single (or groups of) small businesses set up promotional days such as the one they did, and very often it won't cost a penny!

The author John King works in the website design industry and is a keen guitarist. He lives in Surrey, England and is a regular visitor to the excellent independent music store Ritz Music, who can be found at http://www.ritzmusic.co.uk