Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
Dave Charest: Today on episode 32 of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from an owner who decided there would be no plan b. And I'm sharing why finding your niche market can make all the difference. This is the Be a Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest: My name is Dave CharEst, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer, and I'm here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining me for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. You know, I've mentioned in a previous episode that in a certain point in my life, I was very much into playing poker. More specifically, Texas hold'em poker. Well, no limit Texas hold'em, actually. Oh, and the tournament version of the game. In fact, my wife and I held regular games at our home. Now, let's just go back there for a second. Did you notice what happened there? We started with poker, but that's a rather general term for, right, a wide variety of card games where you wager on who has the best hand. But then I got a little bit more specific. Texas hold'em. Then no limit Texas hold'em tournament. Texas hold'em. And finally, tournament no limit Texas hold'em home games. Now, you can imagine how happy I was to find a website dedicated to how to host a no limit Texas hold'em poker tournament in your home. It had all the resources we needed to pull up the games without a hitch. Now, the website served a particular niche market and could serve and speak directly to that market, which, of course, was me. Now, when you focus on a set of people with similar characteristics, your products and your services and your marketing become more specialized to speak to a specific audience, you become a go to resource because your offerings are better suited to their specific needs, much like the home poke attorney website served my particular needs. Now, a niche market often means the people you reach need what you offer and are more likely to become customers. So pay attention to how today's guest found success by moving away from the ultra competitive types and instead focused on another type of customer, the non competitive weekend warrior, allowing her to become the go to resource for local customers looking for a safe environment where they could feel comfortable and not intimidated. So if you're not already, perhaps focusing on a niche can benefit your business by allowing you to serve specific needs and better use your resources well. Friend. Today's guest is Charlotte Walsh, owner and operator of Charles river running in Norwood, Massachusetts. A runner since the age of 13, Charlotte started the community based sit and fit, full service running and walking shoe store in April of 2012 to provide shoes, accessories and anything a person who is active and on their feet all day would need to pursue their goals. Now, before starting the business, Charlotte did the things she thought she was supposed to do. She was in the military for a couple of years, got her mba, tried office jobs, but those things never made her happy inside and she would find herself daydreaming about side hustles. But it took her a while to be in a place where she had the stability and the freedom to pursue a legitimate small business. But at the age of 45, the single parenthood took the plunge. And although the first year was terrifying, she never thought about giving up. She had decided early on there would be no plan b. Now, eleven years later, Charlotte finds herself driven to understand her customers so she can provide the best products and services to serve their needs. Now in our conversation today, Charlotte discusses her biggest surprise, what challenges her most today, and the time she felt like she hit it out of the park. But first, Charlotte recalls a big miss early in her journey as a business owner. Let's pick up the conversation there.
Charlotte Walsh: My big miss was so running shoe stores serve a couple markets like you have a couple groups of people are going to walk through your door. You have your aspirational runner, you have your hardcore runner, you have your high school athletes. And I came into the business with the 500 pound gorilla, which is marathon sports. Our regional big chain was recently bought by fleet feet. So they're not really marathon sports anymore. But that's another story. They, and I didn't know this had a real chokehold on the scholastic market high school, and they had people that were just dedicated to building relationships, high school coaches giving them lots of great things and wooing them and getting them to come to their special student nights. I didn't know this. I didn't do my research. And so my first couple years, I brought in all of these track spikes and cross country spikes, and I throw these pizza parties and try to get the area high school runners to come to purchase my spikes. And my trainers and my sales reps were always like, yeah, we'll try this. But they weren't telling me that they already had a very strong relationship with the marathon sports people. So, you know, I made some heavy investments in those products. And just at the end of the season, I was holding all this inventory. I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't get in the door with these coaches. And then I finally, someone's like, hey, don't you know that so and so is best friends with so and so works. I'm like, so I got out of that market. I was like, you know, you take it, you got it, you're great at it. You have a relationship. I'm never going to win that battle. I'm going to go after a different.
Dave Charest: That changes things a lot for you, though, and I think helps you now focus. What did you find? I'm going to let that go and move, I'm sure. Maybe this is where you're going, but where is this?
Charlotte Walsh: Yeah. What it really came down to, this wasn't my biggest hit, but what I really found is that I'm not from New England. I'm from Wisconsin. I'm from a small town. I open doors for people. I say hello, I make eye contact. It's weird in New England, right? Don't do that. But where it really works is when you have a brick and mortar owner operator store where you can actually, like, engage with people, and they're taken a little bit aback by how friendly you are, but then they kind of like it and they enjoy it. And I keep a tissue box behind my register. Like, people come into my store and tell me things like crying, and then I just put the tissue box up the counter and they're like, I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm crying. But I found that not going after the high school cross country coaches, I was able to go after just people. People wanted to connect and people who were maybe not ready for it, but it became a thing. Like, it's a place where people know where someone's going to be nice to them.
Dave Charest: So what was the biggest, the biggest win then?
Charlotte Walsh: So the biggest win for me was when I had maybe been open, like a year or two and a sales rep walked through the door with the most ridiculous looking shoe I'd ever seen in my entire life. I mean, it was ridiculous. And I was like, what is this shoe? Well, this is a company called Hoka Eleven. It was started in France by the same guy who developed the parabolic ski and then understood that a curve and geometry and physics work in this ski. And why don't we apply it to a running shoe for mountain racers in Europe who want to crash down the mountain as fast as they can on their heels, running super fast. So they built this rocker shaped, boat looking shoe with tons of cushion, and, you know, we're just kind of trying it out in the United States, and I'm like, huh. Kind of already kind of understanding my town, which is Norwood, which is super towny, super sporty. My customers have knee replacements and hip replacements and in their sixties, and there's women are still, like, chicks with sticks are still playing indoor field hockey, and all the guys are still playing ice hockey, and the women are in, like, women's soccer leagues. And I'm like, these people in their minds are like 20 years old, but their bodies are falling. They're falling apart. They're replacing things. And I thought, if this shoe is going to help this customer, which it's everyone who walks through the door, because, like, older people in Norwood, remember when there are real shoe stores here where you sit down and get your foot measured? It's called Hanlon's shoes. It was right across the street from me. These people love their downtown, they love their small businesses. And if they recognize that there's a shoe store here that will do all those things for them, and I can give them a product that's going to allow them to just keep going, maybe this is going to work, right? So I'm like, all right, I am going to try this ridiculous looking shoe. Hoco, one, one. This was ten years ago. I bring it in, people are like, what is that? It was also coming on the heels of, no pun intended, the barefoot running craze. Do you remember this? Where vibram five finger shoe, which is a convention Tony post from, I think he's from Weston or something, came up with this idea that this shoe that had no cushion on it. And then there was a book called born to run, which was this wonderful book about people that cured their running injuries by just running barefoot. Right. You know, Americans, we're all like, yeah, this is a great. And so then everyone gets a stress fracture because they're running around on pavement, not in the woods, with these shoes that had no cushion. So we're coming off the heels of this. Like, everyone got a stress fracture, try to do a marathon and a vivram five finger shoe. So it was like the, just like the great. It was just like this great. I don't know. All these forces came to happen where Hoka was a thing that made sense. So for many years, it didn't make sense, and it was so weird, and it was weird looking, and no one wanted to try it. I was wearing them. I was having some back issues. So for me, it was great. And I kept talking about it, and I kept it on the shelf, and I kept selling it and kept selling it, and it's a huge shoe company now. Like, it's a real brand. They're almost beating out Brooks running shoes, the number one brand in specialty run, coming very close. That's when I kind of like, went with my intuition and brought in a product that really worked for my customers really early on. I can't believe I got that right. But I did. It's one of my bigger wins.
Dave Charest: Yes. So you mentioned a little while ago that it's always changing, right? There's always different things going on the market, all of this stuff. But also, I would imagine that means your priorities. Right. And so where you are today, what would you say are your top priorities right now?
Charlotte Walsh: With the business fighting for market share with my shoe companies. My shoe companies are going after my consumer. Their business model is direct to consumer. Now they needed us. Before there was the inter noodles online shopping. We were the way their shoes were sold, you had to go through a retailer to get their shoe. Now you can go directly to hoka.com or brooks.com or saucony.com. and they have these things like find your perfect fit by taking this five question quiz, which never works because you can't find your perfect fit by taking an online. And there's no standard shoe size. One person's eight and a half is completely different from another company's eight and a half. But they can make so much more money if they go directly to consumer. So they're super aggressive with advertising, super aggressive with online presence, social media. They are building distribution centers that are filled with products that are only for direct consumer. So where I can't get a size eight and an all white Hoclifton, my customer can go online and pull from a completely different pool of inventory that set aside just them, not for me. My biggest challenge is trying to stay relevant in this marketplace. And actually my vendor partner is now kind of a little bit adversarial. They'll tell me that they need me. You're so important to us. You're the voice of the brand. And I'm like, okay, but I understand where you're going. You have to be profitable. This is capitalism. But where do I fit in this evolving market? And then you have to just come back to community, community, community. Opening the door, forming relationships, reaching out by email, really forming bonds, and letting them know that they want a nice downtown, which Norwood has with market, with stores and restaurants. You actually have to patronize those businesses because we'll go away, will go away if you don't shop with us. I like sitting on my couch and shopping, too, but I can't do that 100% of the time. Or the businesses that I love to walk up and down the street and look at the windows will be gone.
Dave Charest: I want to stay here for a bit because I think this is the interesting thing. And I know community, of course, is really important to you. And so, I guess, what are some of the things that you try to do to combat that, to make sure that you're getting people, we're always talking about this idea. Like, it really, for a small business, it is those relationships that are so important. And so, I guess, how are you activating that? Like, what are you doing to combat that?
Charlotte Walsh: You know, what I did really early on is I formed a running club out of the store. I had lived here for about a year before I opened the store, and I was a fairly, you know, in my mind, competitive runner running pretty well. I had tried out some of the local running clubs and they were fairly competitive and a little bit cutthroat and not super friendly, not Wisconsin at all. And I thought, when I open this store, I'm going to form a club for people that run really, really slowly. And they like to go out afterwards and have a cup of coffee or drink a beer. And we're going to have all different types of routes, and I'm going to give them the map to the route so that if they get lost, they'll just have this on a little piece of paper. Oh, here's the street. Here's where I turn. This is how I get back to home, to the starting place. We'll all start together, and we'll all wait at the end until everyone's back. And then we'll all get together and we'll go out and know each other's names. And I thought, that's my customer. Fast runners don't go to a running store to buy shoes. They buy them online because they go through ten pairs a year. I need that runner who's the weekend warrior and runs a twelve minute mile and maybe never runs a five k, but just runs around their neighborhood. I want that customer, and I want to know that person, and I want to build a place for them where they feel super comfy because most. This is the number one comment I get when someone walks through my door. Hi, how are you? I say, they're like, well, I just want to let you know I'm not really a runner. I thought, that's so interesting. Why you run, right? They're like, yeah. I'm like, well, then you're a runner. And you belong here. You belong in this store. You can come in. Yes, you should be in this store. So I want, I just want to build a community of people that felt that Charleston running is a place that they can walk into. Even if they're a mailman and they're in their feet all day and they need some shoes or they're a walker or they're a lapsed runner or I needed to build a space where people felt super comfortable and not intimidated. So when I started the club, I called it Thursday strong. I have the first picture. It's me and three people wearing winter hats and blinky lights. It's like December or something. And I'm like, I'm just going to start this club. We're going to run in the dark. We'll put lights on, and we'll just run around the block a couple of times. And it's grown. I have 100 people signed up each session. 100 people. Now, all 100 don't show up at one time. But I start after Boston Marathon, and I go to end of September, and then I take three weeks off, and then we start in October and we go to the Thursday before the Boston Marathon. So it's two six month sessions Thursday night. 630 doesn't change. We always start here. There's always a two, three, and a five mile route with directions and a map. It's an email that comes out from constant contact every Wednesday, saying, hey, hey, you almost made it to the best day of the week for me for a run. You know, it's got your maps on that. So now people have the map on their phone. That's kind of what the store is known for now is this big gaggle of people that warm outside the door on Thursday night at 630, no matter what the weather is or what time of year it is.
Dave Charest: So talk to me a little bit about your approach here with the marketing stuff, because I've looked at a few of your emails, and I immediately noticed, yeah, there are maps in there. Theyre the directions. And I love that just in general, because I think oftentimes people can assume people know too much in many instances. And oftentimes if youre not speaking to an internal fear or something like that or giving people the tools to help, youre actually really helping a lot. So I love that youre doing that. The other thing that I noticed was that the emails are also very personable and they're written and kind and warm, I guess, is the word I want to use here. And so I guess this is matching what you're saying that you wanted to create. Right. But just kind of take me through that process. How did you come up with, I guess, here's how I'm going to do this. Here's how I'm going to do this. This is my approach to marketing. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Charlotte Walsh: It's been good that I've had some good coaches along the way, kind of informal coaches, like, help me find a voice and let people know that if I'm going to have this relationship where I'm reaching out online and not in real life, maybe through an email, maybe Instagram or Facebook, that really people are voyeurs and they're scared. You know, you brought out two things. They're scared and they're voyeurs. Like, we like walking around at night because people have their lights on and we want to see inside their houses. You know, people love reality tv because they want to see these embarrassing, kind of, like, vulnerable moments that people have. So, as, you know, and being kind of an introvert and a private person, I realized that I was going to have to let some of that go and be vulnerable, be personable, but let everyone else know that it's, you know, I got you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm not going to drop you out on a run in the dark. You know, I'm going to make you wear a light and a blinking light. I'm going to give you a map and I'll be here when you're finished. But, yeah, it's really kind of letting people know that they're not going to show up to this, like, ultra competitive, snarky, we're going to drop you in the dark type of running event, which had been my experience when I first got here. I know the whole tough guy thing. I was in the Marine Corps for five years. I get it. And that's fun for some people, but for other people, that's terrifying. That's not what they want to sign up for. Like, don't be mean to me.
Dave Charest: Although there are some people who do, yes.
Charlotte Walsh: That's why we have the Marine Corps.
Dave Charest: Talk to me a little bit about, like, what does the typical day look like for your business or for you really personally? And I guess all of it, like, what does your typical day look like?
Charlotte Walsh: So I built my store hours around my customer, but also, and it shifted after the pandemic and then the businesses around me on main street. Why would I open at 08:00 a.m. when nothing on the street opens till tend to. So, you know, my typical day, you know the business I roll in about 930. I've got other things I'm doing at home. I only live a mile and a half away from this door, which is wonderful. Have a commute. You know, I have a side hustle going on. I started a flower farm, so I do that most mornings. Do some working out. I grab my dog, stick her in the car, drive to work, sweep off the front stoop, put out the open sign, bring all the socks that I washed from the night before. Because when you come to my store to try on a pair of shoes, you have to put on a clean pair of socks. I learned that after the entire boys cross country team showed up after practice one day having two sons, I know how bad smell. It's just a small business. I'm one door. Some days I'm crazy busy. Some days I have maybe five people come in this door. I open up my laptop immediately, and my social media game isn't always on, but, you know, kind of checking social media. The second wave, going through emails, looking at the calendar. I constantly have orders for shoes coming in. I have to revise those weeks ahead of time to make sure I'm not bringing in something I don't need. Kind of reaching out to my vendor partners because I do a lot of events at the store. I bring in a lot of vendors with demo shoes. Yeah. Following up with customer emails. I'm really trying to be so my creative time is when I'm running or exercising. Frees my mind up, and that's when the ideas start flowing and I think of something, oh, maybe we should try that in six months. But when I get to work, that's when I kind of open up the calendar and start to get creative. I spend a lot of time trolling other running shoe stores for ideas. I manage three different businesses, social media platforms. I'm constantly kind of like, managing those accounts, looking at what the competition is doing, getting ideas for that, and then helping customers, which I love. I remember I was celebrating my first year anniversary, and there's a woman named Melinda Ailes who was the kind of bank person with score. So I worked a lot with score before I opened my business, and they set me up to meet with Linda Ailes, who used to be in commercial lending. And so she was kind of the person who would warm you up before you went into the banks for lending. And she was so sweet. She came to my first year anniversary and got a pair of shoes. She's like, Charlotte, what was your biggest surprise your first year? And I was like, I didn't realize how much I was going to love my customers. And I do. I find them adorable, even the most annoying ones. I love the old people that come in. I love the people that bring their parents, and I love the people that bring their awkward teenagers in. I mean, they can't even make eye contact or speak, you know? But I. I've got to work between the parent sometimes. Like, I want the parent to go to the coffee shop next door just so that I can talk to them because the parents like lording over them. I love talking to the new runner. I love talking to the old runners, like these people that can just barely walk with their hobbling in, and they want to tell you a story about the time, you know, they were running with the running Boston running superstars from 50 years ago. It's, the running store is like this. It's this place where people come to, like, tell their stories. And there's some incredible stories out there. The legends will walk in. And I have this little photo on the wall of Catherine Switzer as she was being thrown off the marathon course. So there's this woman named Katherine Switzer, and she's a marathoner. And it was 1970, 319 69, one of those years, no women could run the Boston Marathon. She registered as case Weitzer and then had her boyfriend, who was like a football player, kind of run tackle for her. So there's a photo of her on the course in a baggy sweatsuit. And her boyfriend is pushing the director of the Boston marathon, pushing him away from her because she was mid course and he was. The race director was trying to chase Katherine twice her down to pull her off the course. Anyway, I have, like, this guy named Lucky comes in. He's got to be in his late seventies. He's like, oh, jock so and so. Who's the race director? I remember him. What, his story about this guy? Like, he personally knows him. Anyway, my point is that I love my customers. I really do. I love their stories. They tell me, I love that they're going to fall in love with running, too, you know, it's nice.
Dave Charest: Do you have a staff?
Charlotte Walsh: Yeah, I have a one part terminal.
Dave Charest: So with all this stuff you have going on throughout the day and doing all that kind of, how do you manage, I guess. How do you find the time to be a marketer? How do you find the time to get the word out?
Charlotte Walsh: I've learned with social media that marketing is 24 hours a day. And as much as I hate touching my phone and scrolling, I do it a lot. I do it a lot. My score advisees right away. Mention constant contact to me and they're like, you need to sign up with constant contact right away and you need to build an email list and you need to start like, that's number one thing you need to do. So I looked around at a couple platforms. I think Mailchimp was just starting at the time. Constant contact. They said constant contact is local. My whole thing was local. Right? Buy local, shop local. And then I learned that constant contact was run by a woman, which I was super impressed by. And that when you called Constant Contact, a woman started talking to you. She's like, hi, I'm the owner of this company and I'm like, this is amazing. She's talking to me, you know, even though it was a recording, but really awesome. For my business, I have a monthly newsletter, and so that's one part of my marketing weekly. I have a newsletter that goes out to 100 of my run so I can communicate with them that way right away. I started a Facebook page and soon after that, Instagram. I used to be on Twitter, but that really wasn't serving me. You know, it wasn't really building my brand. I got rid of that after it got bought by somebody else. I started out doing some print advertising, but then I quickly dropped that because it was so expensive and I don't think the audience was. It wasn't wide enough. Yeah. So my scheduled things, I know I have a monthly newsletter I need to write. I don't blast my email list because I promise them when I get their email that I'm going to send them one email a month. It's going to be fantastic. And I'm not ever going to fill your inbox with like 100 messages. I don't want to do the text thing. I think that's insulting. I just, I don't want a text from a business. So I project that onto my customers. My marketing for Instagram and Facebook is pretty regular. But again, I have two other accounts that I, that I manage.
Dave Charest: So I feel like I'm constantly in there doing it.
Charlotte Walsh: Do you do a lot on those platforms?
Dave Charest: It's rough. Like, personally, like, I try to stick with one. This is what we recommend people do. So I do a lot on LinkedIn, but I. It's an interesting slog. I do my own, like, newsletter and things like that. Right. And I think that's where I often find, you know, I feel like social is one of those things. That it's created this environment where you have to continually feed the beast, right? And it demands, that's what I call it. Yeah, you. It demands your energy, right? And I think on many levels it's been great, but to the point where it is now, where it demands so much of you. Like, I feel like this is why other things, such as email and owning the audience and being able to go directly to people is so much more important because you're not at the whim of them saying, you know what? Today we're going to change the algorithm and no one's going to see this thing that you posted because we want you to do video now. And it's like, now it's like they're dictating what you need to do. And it can be really helpful. I think people should use it, but I think you need to find it in a way that works best for you, knowing that your goal is to not stay there, but move people to where they're your people. So that's how I kind of look at it. So I'm curious, as you're doing all of this, what does success look like for you and how do you measure that?
Charlotte Walsh: Well, I used to think that success was a certain number of sales that I made per year, but then I didn't get there. I had to change it along the way because I had to look back and think, okay, Charlotte, why did you open a small. Why did you choose this road, which is fairly difficult, instead of going to an office and making x amount of money and having a healthcare plan, why did you choose it? I was like, okay, I chose it because I want to be my own boss and I wanted to do things that made me happy. Okay, well, what is that? What is making you happy? Setting normal hours that don't make you crazy, not commuting, not having a boss that you don't want to be around, bringing your dog to work, I'm going to go to Europe and run in the Dolomites. I'm going to close the store for a week. You know what? I can do that. I've done that. So for me, success is having a lifestyle which is not lavish, but brings me joy. And I have some control over.
Dave Charest: How does constant contact help you achieve that?
Charlotte Walsh: I think what constant contact allows me to do is pretty easily and in a format that I like, communicate with my customer base on a regular basis for a very affordable cost.
Dave Charest: Was there a main reason why you decided to go with constant contact other than the local thing?
Charlotte Walsh: Well, I really like that when you call them or you have a question, you're talking to a person and they help you really, really quickly. I loved that. I took a lot of classes at constant contact. Like I went driven up to the campus many times for free education and opportunities to network with other small business owners that you can learn from. Just 15 minutes focus group, you can find a nugget in there and take it back. And I'm like a visual, hands on learner. So I really appreciated bringing my laptop, going to the classes and learning the basics. Yeah, I thought it was for a non techie person. I thought it was a platform that I could understand pretty easily. I could teach myself, and if I couldn't understand it on my own, I could get the answer in about ten minutes.
Dave Charest: Are there any specific ways that constant contact helps you kind of save time in the work that you're doing?
Charlotte Walsh: I like that as soon as I post my email, I can just post it up to socials. I like that I can pull lists out and add lists up. Like my point of sale system allows me to sort consumer customers by the model of shoe they buy. So if I have a new balance, 860 version twelve that's going on sale, I can pull out a list of emails from my point of sale of every customer who bought that shoe, load it up into constant contact and send out an email that says, hey, your favorite shoe is just gone on sale this week.
Dave Charest: Have there been any things that you've done in order to grow your email list? Like what strategy have you used to do that?
Charlotte Walsh: Yes. When I first opened, I just didn't take a day off and I appeared at every town day, every road race, anywhere. I could set up my tent. Like the first thing I did was bought a big splashy tenta and I would raffle something off and I get an email from that. And that's how initially I grew my email. I do ask for emails at point of sale. People have become a bit more protective of their emails lately. And then I have a online store that plugs into the back of my website that's called Run Free project. I collect emails that way as well. So every month before I publish my monthly newsletter, I will download all the email addresses that I got that month at the point of sale and the online store and load that up into my general list. So it's, I haven't been too aggressive about growing my email list, but it does grow every month.
Dave Charest: Well, it sounds like you're doing the right things. I think, you know, one of the things is just really making it part of the process. Right. And so you're always asking. Right. And so it sounds like that, I think, is just a big boon right there. Like, a lot of times, people just don't ask. Right. And it's like, no, that's really, if you just do that, you're gonna start to grow that. So I think that's really great. You mentioned one of the things, you know, obviously, people being a little bit more protective of their emails these days, but also, you mentioned when you do your newsletter, right. It's gonna be good. So what's your approach with the newsletter? Like, what types of things are you including in that? So somebody's gonna find value in it when they do receive it from you?
Charlotte Walsh: Well, I always have an intro to, like, here's a new month. Here's what I'm working for. What are you working for? Like, you know, this month brings this iconic race. So I open up the email with something a little bit personal and friendly, just kind of like. And if I can hook, you know, if I hook them in, in that first paragraph, they'll scroll down. So I used to have, like, a very word heavy, too many article newsletter, and I switched to just, like, the opening paragraph and then three big graphics that I create in canva, and they're usually events that I'm having in store. I find that people aren't necessarily that interested in the products that I'm selling, but they're interested in what's going on at the store. Like, what are we doing as a community this month? So I always, you know, once a month, I always have a community event at the store, which is always on a Thursday night. So I make sure people, so people will definitely be there because it's the right. I have a vendor come in and say, I'll have Brooks running. They'll bring the brand new Brooks ghost 15 to demo. So they'll bring all the shoes, and people can their shoes off, new Brooks shoes on, go for a run or a walk back fender usually brings in some refreshments. Have a nice social hour after that. So there's always at least one or two events a month that I'm promoting within the newsletter. And then I like to have a list of just other things that are going on in the community, other road races and things like that that are coming up or sharing some tips about summer, like hydration article, a link to another blog or article that someone else has written. I follow other newsletters in the industry, so there's always kind of content that's in the back of my mind that I know that I can reuse. I don't use AI yet at this point. Point. Because I think people would know.
Dave Charest: I think in a case like yours where you're using it, or I should say you're creating very personal stories and things like that, like, I think you want to continue to do that, but I think in those areas where you're doing more general information about something that's not necessarily like a personal thing, that can be very helpful. Right. So for example, we have some customers that like, does the customer that does a farmer's market every weekend, right. And she's basically needs to figure out how to say the same thing every week but in a different way to get people to come to like. And so for her, for example, it's been very helpful to be able to like, oh, all right, here's a different way to say it. And here's like a way to, and then of course, you, you human it up, right? Like you, you kind of, you know, put your own things to it. And so I think it can be valuable that way. But I think, yeah, when you're in a situation where you're the, you actually are writing and you're telling that story, you're doing that, it's like, yeah, well, you want that to come from you, but there might be other sections of the newsletter. You might be able to help you with that type of thing, but it's definitely an interesting thing. It'll be interesting with the AI piece, with the data components and when it can start to help you work as an assistant and help kind of coach you with some things too. And I think that'll be interesting. Aside from just the content generation I'm.
Charlotte Walsh: Interested in, I haven't dipped my toe in the water yet.
Dave Charest: Yeah, it's worth playing around with. It's pretty easy to just get in there and I think you'll be surprised by most people are like, wow. Because all you really need to do is put in a few keywords and then you get something that then you can do something with. Right. And it's pretty interesting. What would be your number one tip for another business? Maybe even someone similar to yourself. But getting started with constant contact, first.
Charlotte Walsh: Of all, figure out like, your email list is like your gold. So think some strategy around how you plan on growing that quickly and sign up for a bunch of other emails from other businesses just to get some ideas about what you like and what looks good and what you think is going to resonate with customers and then apply that to your constant contact center.
Dave Charest: Well friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, find your niche market. Charlotte shared a story about letting go of the high school market after she discovered a chain competitor already had a chokehold in that area. This decision freed her to focus on an underserved market in her community. She decided to focus on those weekend warriors looking for a friendly group to run with that isn't ultra competitive. She focuses on providing them a safe environment where they feel comfortable and not intimidated. Number two, grow your email list quickly as Charlotte mentioned, your email list is gold. Think about the ways to grow your list quickly and consistently after that. When Charlotte first got started, she went to local events where her target market was going to be. There she raffled off products to build that email list. Today, asking for email addresses is a regular part of her routine in the store and on her website. Consider list growth, customer growth, and use the tools available to you in your constant contact account. I'll share some links in the show notes to ideas to grow your email list and number three, hold events at your store. Now, throughout this conversation, we heard how important building a community is to Charlotte's business. She even found that in her newsletters, people were less interested in learning about products and more in what was going on at the store. And of course, once people were at the store, well, that's when she could showcase those products. Now, there's power in bringing people together and building community around your business that pays off more than just a one time sale. So here's your action item for today. Check out how you can grow your contact list with constant contact sign up forms. Now, as I mentioned earlier, list growth is customer growth and you should always be adding new contacts to your listen. Whether it's with pop up signup forms, landing pages or text to join, your constant contact account has tools to make it easier for you to add new contacts to your account on a regular basis. I'm going to include some details in the show notes for you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me directly at Dave dot charestonstantcontact.com. if you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. Well friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.