POLL RESULTS: What brings people to your store?

Our latest poll asked what type of activity was most effective in creating footfall for your store?

These days dealers have to be much more proactive in bringing people to their store. Gone is the time when you could rely on a hardcore of loyal enthusiasts and passing trade to keep things turning over. With so many outlets and, let’s face it, easier ways to buy instruments, shop owners need to provide compelling reasons why customers should choose their place as a destination. And that’s before you even get on to the task of selling to them. 

Of course, the good news is that it is now so much easier to communicate with your customers and feed them direct and even targeted information to help them get inside your shop. But still they need a good reason to come. So what works best?

Well, some 43 per cent of our snapshot poll said that music lessons were the best and most effective way of bringing people into the shop. And really, they are a no-brainer for any store that has the space to do it. They create new musicians, needing new gear, right in the middle of your shop. What could be better? And it creates the ideal scenario for building genuine and long-lasting customer loyalty.

Local ads were deemed to be the second most effective method by 29 per cent of the survey, ahead even of advertising and promotions on dealers’ own website, which 14 per cent thought the most effective. Clinics and workshops in-store are equally as popular, with 14 per cent also preferring such events. 

Nobody in our survey regarded sales promotions as a good attractor. We can assume perhaps that competing on price is something a lot of High Street dealers have turned away from as a tactic.