Speaking of wasted opportunity when it comes to marketing – I was at the Australian Post office shop in Sydney and saw the perfect example on how not to use your prime space in the shop. By prime space I mean any area of the shop including the shop-front where eyeballs are most likely to be plentiful. So what happened?
As I was collecting this registered post letter I saw a full low laying box of Moustache Grooming Kits right there on the counter between me and the shop assistant! I couldn’t help but make a comment to this shop employee behind the counter that I bet these would be a raving success and that they would sell 3 kits this year, if they’re lucky! Needless to say my sarcasm was very well understood and accepted and we both had a chuckle. This lady of south Asian appearance added that they’d sold none the whole month of January to which I added silver lining to it by saying, there are 11 months to go and sales could improve – not!
Now, who would in the right mind put moustache grooming kits right there at the counter of the post office shop thinking that they’d sell any; maybe back in the 1960s and 1970s but in 2014 – they clearly need to rethink their marketing strategy to put it politely (cough cough – my advice would be to look for another job).
What could have happened here? My guess is that the sales rep for the moustache grooming kits importer (clearly made in Chine like everything else nowadays) was very good convincing the Australia post franchisee to place those on the front counter – and there are 4 in this particular shop!
Now it’s pretty obvious that this is the missed opportunity when it comes to marketing. I think that you’d be better off putting almost anything else and you would see better sales – colourful iPhone covers is one example. Bad marketing will yield bad sales numbers and zero sales in one month is disastrous in anyone’s language. This makes it a conversion rate of 0% in a month with so many eyeballs actually seeing it. To use website traffic analogy, despite of the large number of visitors (high traffic) there were no sales.
Would it be so obvious to website owners why their website is not converting – in my opinion it should be. Whether you’re getting your website traffic via a ‘free’ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or paying for advertising like Google AdWords, you’d be wasting effort and money if you weren’t fulfilling the purpose of your website which is almost always selling something, product or a service.
So it’s a no brainer to think of your target audience first and then work out the best way to reach that audience whether you own a high street local business or a website selling to the world. Whatever you do – don’t try selling moustache grooming kits in a suburb that is full of young families whose fathers don’t wear moustaches – hardly surprising in year 2014.
