Courting Customers Online

A cool article from the Rapid City Journal about how small businesses are using social media and online notifications to attract customers:

More businesses court customers online

Bully Blends Coffee and Tea Shop sends its online audience daily “blasts” about specials such as ham and bean soup, beef brisket ciabatta and vegan minestrone.

The 756 Facebook fans and 129 Twitter followers of the business receive menu updates every morning, which turns them into customers for lunch and dinner, according to Aida Compton, owner of Bully Blends.

“We have some particular lunch menus that are very popular, some soup,” Compton said. “When we post that we have that soup that day, people come in because they know.”

The daily promotion on social network sites creates a good problem for the business — especially on the soup-plus-cornbread days. The cooks can’t make enough, regardless of the size of pot they use, Compton said.

As online consumption becomes increasingly portable, businesses are moving away from the personal computer model of getting the word out about their business and toward a presence on smart phones.

Compton said making Bully Blends’ business more mobile is something that interests her and her husband, along with helping the restaurant become easier to find on pocket-friendly devices.

The National Retail Federation estimates that by 2015, shoppers worldwide are expected to use their mobile phones to buy goods and services worth about $120 billion, amounting to 8 percent of the total e-commerce market.

Many national companies already are cashing in on the mobile retailing concept: Target and Wal-Mart, for instance, both have mobile sites. But what about small mom-and-pop shops? Mobile phones have provided retailers with an easy, affordable way to reach new and existing customers.

Could Bully Blends customers buy their coffee and tea products from their phones, or is mobile retailing beyond their capabilities?

Mobile sales are possible, according Scott Meyer, co-founder of 9 Clouds in Sioux Falls. Meyer said he expects to start seeing more of the smaller, mom-and-pop shops set up mobile retail shops within two years to allow for actual purchases, starting first with companies that are working with national brands.

The great thing is that small-town shops with mobile technology can suddenly compete much better with national companies, Meyer said.

That doesn’t necessarily mean creating a retail application or a mobile website. In many ways, social networking and texting is a great way to slowly step into the mobile retailing landscape, and Meyer already is seeing that in Sioux Falls.

For instance, Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet restaurant in Sioux Falls recently started using Foursquare, a smart-phone application, to attract customers, and Nick’s Hamburger Shop in Brookings has had success in text-messaging coupons to customers.

In Rapid City, Acme Bicycles has an online Twitter and Facebook presence, and owner Tim Rangitsch plans to ramp it up this fall to increase his interaction with customers.

He also would be interested in increasing his business’ presence in the mobile world, and said GPS devices are already sending tourists to his shop.

“I do see the importance of wrangling it for the business, and I can get out more information,” Rangitsch said.

A mobile presence would simply be another way Acme Bicycles could connect nationally with mountain biking enthusiasts, encouraging them to come to the Black Hills, Rangitsch said.

Meyer said some business owners still are hesitant to use the Web to market and sell their merchandise, partly because there is so much new technology out there.

But it holds a lot of potential, particularly in catching members of the younger generation, he said.

It will be some years before mobile sales really take off with smaller companies in South Dakota. But it seems inevitable that customers someday will expect it.

Contact Holly Meyer at 394-8421 or holly.meyer@rapidcityjournal.com. Sioux Falls Argus Leader reporter Kelly Thurman contributed to this story.

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/business/article_af4d7c6e-dd4f-11df-9640-001cc4c002e0.html