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Plain Talk
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Overcoming Growth Challenges for Emerging Brands Part 2
From The Buxton Co In markets where you already have a presence, how do you know where to open your next location? Because with limited dollars to invest, you need to make sure you don’t stub your toe on that next location or even the first location. Well, the answer stems from knowing the secret to what makes a great location. Traditionally it’s been about location, location, location. And while there’s some truth behind that methodology, the reality is, the new mantra of customer, customer, customer, puts the odds of opening a successful location in your organization’s favor. When you think about today’s complex customer, it’s a lot more than just a demographic profile. Demographics don’t tell you anything about who those people are as consumers. What do they like to do? How do they view the world? What are their interests and attributes? Customer data and analytics help you answer those questions and more by showing you how people spend their money and live their lives – painting the picture of opportunities and demand. And knowing those attributes is essential to finding a great location. Why? Because when you’re opening up your next location, you want to find a lot of individuals who have similar attributes to your best customer. Map It Out By using the methodology of customer, customer, customer and the right customer analytics solution, you can map out every potential household or individual that looks like your best customer. From there, you can visually see where there’s a high concentration of people who have similar likes and attributes to your core customers. That’s why customer data is essential in the decision making process. It gives you the greatest opportunity to find the right types of people that will help increase your cash flow and grow your brand. Keep Your Customers Close. But Your Locations Closer. The proximity and convenience of your locations to consumers also greatly affects the performance of a location as the closer customers are to your location, the more valuable they are to your business. By taking the customer data we talked about above and applying it from a distance standpoint, you will see that your likelihood of success depends on the proximity of your next location to your core customers. Simply getting smarter about how to use psychographic or household-level data allows you to make better decisions in terms of where you plant your first flag in a market or your next location. Tip The Scales While it’s critical to know where to put your next or first location, it’s equally important to know how to scale brand. When talking about scaling your brand, it doesn’t matter if you’re a corporate concept looking to open your first location or you’re a franchise concept looking to optimize a market, the first question is always the same: how many units can a market hold? Knowing the potential of a market boils down to knowing how many of the right types of people are in a particular market and how many of those types of people you need to have to support a successful unit. The Bottom Line By taking a customer first approach, you’re using a proactive method to find more locations so that you can prioritize your brand’s growth and continue to increase cash flow with the greatest opportunity for success.
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