Unlike many neighborhoods in Brooklyn and New York City in general, Gravesend is difficult to define. While it has a greater percentage of people of Ukraining and Arab ancestry, it is still predominantly white. While on average, it is mainly middle-class, the average home price is over $1 Million and around a quarter of its children live below the poverty level.
Many New York neighborhoods have a kind of cultural glue that holds them together, Gravesend feels like a neighborhood that still hasn’t settled on one. That doesn’t mean it’s not a vibrant and dynamic place, it’s just hard to classify neatly. In a way, that makes it a bit unique.
This can create a marketing challenge for business in Gravesend because it isn’t clear how to segment the market and find the right target customer.
The marketing challenges in Gravesend is finding the right segment of the market to target. You could segment by ethnicity, but that would leave a lot of the market underserved.
In other words, the small business has a clear understanding of their market segment, and they have a clear picture of how they can win. Strategic marketing is how you make this happen.
If there isn't a expected outcome and clear indication of your expected return, then find other help marketing your small business.
If the small business marketing agency you found to help raise your visibility in your market doesn't have a testing and learning plan, find someone else
Any small business digital marketing agency should have digital knowhow. But, you would be surprised that many don't. Before you accept marketing help for your small business, check their technical credentials. Do they offer email marketing? What does their own online marketing look like? How about social media marketing? What do their post look like?
This probably goes without saying, but you'll want to make sure that any marketing help you hire has significant small business experience. Large company solutions won't work.
Marketing is inherently risky. When seeking marketing help, see whether they will share the risk with your small business.
According to Best Designs, original graphics are the most successful.
“Original graphics make up 40% of all successful visual content that accomplishes marketing goals, but 43% of marketers struggle with the consistent production of captivating visuals.”
Since we are communicating one message, the artwork that supports it must work very hard to support the message. This is where local market know-how can really help. Original photos and images of your business in Gravesend interacting with your neighborhood can add value.
It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Gravesend or at your business location.
Every email, no matter how trivial, should have a call to action. This is where all the hard work above pays off. If we omit one, we just wasted resources that could have been spent more cost effectively.
We cover email list building in great detail in our post on small business email marketing. Again, we will just hit the highlights here as it pertains to Gravesend. Every neighborhood has summer fairs. While these were severely impacted by COVID, in our post COVID world they should roar back with a vengeance. It would be smart to see if you could piggy-back off one or more of them.
Incentives, deals, free trials, and samples are all great options when developing your calls to action. See if you can partner with your neighbors to create a shared promotion. This way one shopper in Gravesend has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.
The marketing challenges in Gravesend is finding the right segment of the market to target. You could segment by ethnicity, but that would leave a lot of the market underserved.
I wish it were otherwise, but it is like a law of nature. The size of your account is directly proportional to the time the agency will spend on it. It is also proportional to the quality and experience of the talent that we are assigned to your business. Luckily, you can solve this problem by finding an agency where your business and budget matters to their bottom line. This is why smaller firms are preferable for smaller businesses.
Location is equally important. Most small businesses are local businesses, where the target audience is within a few blocks to mile radius from your location. Each place is unique. It has its own quirks. It takes someone who knows the area to understand those nuances. This is important because you want your ads to be perceived as authentic. Customers are easily turned off by cookie-cutter responses or creative.
Marketing is not an exact science, where you say X and your target always does Y. This doesn't mean that marketing does not work or that it is a waste of time. It simply acknowledges the fact upfront that marketing contains some risk. It is true that there are best practices that can reduce this risk to optimize your return.
However, you never have complete information so sometimes even the best plans take time or need tweaking. This is why you should seek a partner who is upfront about the risk and is willing to share it with you. You also have to be willing to invest the time in following best practices. If you are dictating all the terms, then it is only reasonable that you accept that risk.
If you need help with marketing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
If you're thinking about finding help in Gravesend for your small business, here are the things to keep in mind.
See more about Small Business Marketing in Gravesend. If you are more interest in the borough, you can see our Small Business Marketing in Brooklyn. If you want the full city, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NYC.