Rabbi, what you've outlined is pretty much my sales pitch: I'll give the shop owner six months for free to determine if my site is bringing in enough new customers and purchases to justify the $8.33 a month cost.
If a shop owner tells me that he doesn't think the site has done anything for him, then I say "thank you for trying out our service." I'm always extra-polite with the goodbye, since many shop owners reconsider and email me back a few days after I send them their notice that they've been dropped, and ask that I put them back on the site.
Here's my problem. Not yours, but mine: just a fraction of people who see shop's pages on my site remember to mention my shop's name when they go in to buy. After all, how many people coming running into your store shouting, "I saw your ad in the Yellow Pages!"
But, and maybe I'm assuming too much, the shop owners think that their $300 to $600 Yellow Pages ads are paying off. Maybe, maybe not. The Yellow Pages cannot provide a retail owner with any sort of accurate number of people who have viewed the store's ad.
I can. I can also tell the shop owner how many emails he's received from people asking this or that question. While I can certainly understand why many shop owners don't want to bother answering those emails, the number is a better indication of the level of interest in the shop that comes from my site than anything the Yellow Pages can provide.
In the end, though, my site works. Not for every shop, but for the majority of shops that do the six-month trial.
Call Larry at Pontotoc American Arms in Mississippi. Call Jack at Butt's Gun Sales in Billings, MT. Call Jerry at Far West Shooting & Supply in Santa Barbara, CA. I could give you a list a mile long of shop owners who tried the trial subscription, didn't think it would work, and were pleasantly surprised that it did bring them new customers.
My site is doing exactly what it was intended to do, it's bringing in almost exactly the number of visitors I predicted for 2006, and will bring in the number of visitors I've predicted
for 2007. After spending over five years learning how to get first-page search engine results, I've also learned how to predict traffic.
"I see the hits the ad generates. But I dont care about hits on the web site. I dont care about phone calls. I dont care about people stopping in. The bottom line is I care about the money people spend in the shop and whether the money I am spending on advertising is translating into more money going into the register or not. That sounds harsh and some retail Nimrod will point out that if people arent hitting, calling, dropping in, they wont be buying either. But at the end of the day the only evaluation of whether the advertising is effective or not is whether it translates into more sales. And the jury is still out on that."
Not harsh at all. But, as I've explained to many a shop owner, my job is to deliver the customer to the shop, whether via phone, email, or in person. After that, making the sale is beyond my physical capabilities.
That's advertising. And how you conduct your business is none of my business. If you've found a solution that works for you, I'm not here to argue. Having spent large percentages of my annual gross sales on advertising and promotions since 1987, I congratulate you if you can do well with spending less.
My rant above was about a shop in a well-known metro area that is getting three, four or even more times more views than most other shops on my site. Yet the owner doesn't believe he's getting any new business. Simple mathematics, the laws of probability, or any other formula you want to apply says he's wrong, and that he has received new customers.
I know that there's another shop in that metro area that wants to dominate the market, and take out the shop owner who's giving me an argument right now. If I have the time, I'll seek out that shop. Or that shop owner will contact me.
Sorry for being so long-winded in this post, but I'd like to provide an example.
There are two major gun stores in the Milwaukee area right now. One has been around since the mid-1980's, and was once the largest gun store in the state. The other was a smaller shop in terms of inventory, until my friend bought the shop in 2000.
My friend did everything right: advertising, expanding the selection of guns and accessories, upgrading the range to make it the best in the state, and hiring sales people who knew what they were talking about, and who knew how to talk to every level of customer.
That "biggest" gun shop? They got an attitude. They got to be rude, even to me (and I was one of their best customers, as well as one of their biggest cheerleaders). Their inventory shrunk. Their range deteriorated.
Well, I guess the little fish swallowed the big shark, yes?
As for your not being able to find my site, do a Google search on "New York gun shops," or "Tennessee gun shops," or "Utah gun shops," or pretty much any other state you'd like to pick. Or just do a Google search for "gun shops" or "gun stores."
Or do a Google search for "Remington shotguns," or "Remington rifles," or "Kimber pistols," or "Sigarms pistols," or "HK Pistols," or "Springfield Armory pistols," or "Springfield Armory rifles," or "Smith and Wesson Revolvers," or "Henry Rifles," or "Marlin rifles," or any other brand or model that I feature on my site.
Rabbi, I've spent over five years learning Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I've become extremely good at it. Enough so that hosting companies have hired me freelance for them, SEO'ing their client's sites. They charge their clients as much as $5000 a month for those services.
And that's the biggest point that's lost on the shop owners I've described. Yes, they may have their own websites. Whoopee. If those sites can't be found by searching for any terms except the store name, then the shop owner might as well put up a small billboard in the middle of Lake Superior.
I provide the equivalent of thousands of dollars a month in SEO services that precious few shops can afford, full-page internet advertising, thousands of pages of models of guns and accessories for which my site visitors can search by, and more.
After having read all of the above that I've posted about my site, I feel much better now.
I offer a service that no other gun-related site does, and it works.
My usual offer to new subscribers is a free six-month trial. However, for owners or managers of gun shops who are THR/TFL/APS members, I've been offering a free one-year trial.
Rabbi, I didn't know you owned a gun store. Had I known, I would have extended that offer to you. My apologies. PM me if you'd like to try it out.
If 70% or more of my subscribers pay to renew, and I don't do "hard sell," what does that tell you?
