There is a woman in Kansas named Debbie. Every Saturday she opens up a former opera house as a place for a farmer’s market. She has used this old building as a craft shop and a place to build her designs, but that season has passed.
Today, Debbie works to line up entertainment. Visitors can find the typical produce, home-baked good and crafts, but Debbie knows that she has to keep solid foot traffic coming in if she is going to succeed in her most recent business venture.
Debbie’s story is inspiring. You see it wasn’t so long ago that Debbie and her husband took their craft from the old opera house and traveled throughout the region selling her wares. Before he passed away her husband would cut wooden pieces while she painted and finished the product. That was before her the cancer.
When her husband died Debbie had choices to make. When it came to her survival she knew she had to do something important. She began to investigate the process of developing, hosting and maintaining a farmer’s market. She began to network with others in her community who could help her and then, because of the trust most people had in Debbie the booths inside the Opera House filled up.
Debbie knows foot traffic is important so she uses her marketing skills to make sure every week has the best chance of success. One of the key things Debbie has done is make a prominent space available for a non-profit organization to share their needs and raise some money. Sometimes this means these non-profit groups provide a fee-based breakfast, bake sale or talent show.
The end result for Debbie is that more people come to the farmer’s market and most of them will browse the other booths. Success comes when she sees booths packing up early because they sold everything they came with.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, for Debbie necessity meant taking an old building and giving people a new reason to visit.
This is the same innovative thinking that can help your online business succeed. Traffic building may take on different forms than a small town bake sale at an old opera house, but you can follow the example of Debbie and find ways to keep your cyber doors open by encouraging customers to come by and see what you have to offer. Don’t take low visitor counts lying down. Develop a new angle and seek to move forward.
There is an old saying that it is better to spend time making a net than diving randomly for fish. This is true in traffic building too, spend time to develop solid ideas instead of taking pot shots in the dark.
Debbie is walking hard on the road to success and she’s hoping others walk with her. They are lining up at the opera house. What are you doing to bring people to your online store? What are you doing to keep them coming back?
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