As Woody Allen famously said, “80% of success is showing up.”
I would qualify that statement slightly – 80% of success is showing up at the right place at the right time. And 100% of the difference between small businesses who succeed and small businesses who don’t is figuring out where and when the right place and time are.
Being in the right place means not only being available to the market where and when they want it, but also being visible to the market where and when they are seeking information.
Being available where and when the market wants you simply means is your product or service available where it is useful and accessible to your customers? Nebraska is probably not the ideal location for a surf shop.
Small Retail businesses and restaurants live and die on location. Location is so important to success that larger businesses have entire departments dedicated to identifying “good” locations for new stores. Based on measuring the success of existing locations, they know exactly what combination of traffic, square footage, density of their target market, and locations of competitors will be successful.
When you consider a location for your business, think hard about how much traffic you need to support your business. Chances are you won’t be a destination, so you need to be somewhere that your customers go anyway.
Think about how you fit with customers are doing while near you. Magazine stands in train stations and airports are great examples of matching the location to the customer need. A traveler waiting to board a plane or train is looking at an extended period of time with nothing to do – just as they are thinking this, they see the magazine stand and decide to pass the time reading.
How well does your business’ location fit the likely state of mind potential customers will be in?
The second part of the right place is putting your message where potential customers are looking.
It is important to understand where people look for information about the products they seek. Big companies can afford to throw around lots of advertising dollars, but small businesses need to be much more careful. The easy place to start is to simply ask customers where they heard about you. This lets you track which channel of advertising reached them. Over time, this information will tell you the ROI on your advertising, so you can focus your spending.
One of the great truths of business is that the winners aren’t necessarily the biggest, the smartest, or the best. The winners are the ones who go out and do something.
Go do your homework. Make sure you know exactly where people are going to want what you’ve got and know exactly where they’re going to look when they figure they need what you’ve got.
Then show up.