Marketing 3-4-5™ Fundamentals Specifically Crafted For Hardware Stores - Browse all industry plans here
Local hardware, building supply, and home improvement stores are still a vibrant part of many local communities and visiting one is a unique experience.
While competition has grown, local hardware and home improvement stores are in a great position to add value to local consumers and contractors alike.
This simple marketing and content plan is based on our Marketing 3-4-5™ approach and shows however every local hardware store can clearly and effectively market themselves online without requiring much time or expense.
As we always say, content drives marketing, and it's surprisingly easy for local businesses to follow a repeatable process for creating impactful content.
Below are simple ways for you to rapidly create content that is relevant, compelling, yet requires zero creativity for your Hardware Store, Home Improvement or Building Supply Store.
Whether you have 2 employees or 20 recognizing them in a blog post is an easy way to reward them for a job well done while helping people get to know your business.
You have a few options to recognize employees. You can recognize employees regularly as an employee of the month, you can recognize them in an ad-hoc way when customers report a great experience to you, or even celebrate new hires or work anniversaries.
What better way to attract customers than to celebrate how you helped deliver value?
This can be as simple as helping a wayward customer find what they're looking for in your store (those of us who are less handy can be intimidated by a hardware store and showing you know how to handle us can be valuable).
More substantially, highlight customer projects. If you want to be known as a destination for kitchen & bath supplies then showing the different projects that you have provided products to is a great way to tell that story.
This is really a variation on celebrating customer success. In this case, if you are a resource for contractors then why not recognize the people who buy from you so regularly?
In doing so, you can celebrate their client's successes. You make them look good and demonstrate your value to other contractors and customers alike.
Do you teach people how to do their own projects? Perhaps you have classes for kids?
In all cases, these classes should be listed on your website. In fact, you should have a page on your website about classes, you should have a calendar on your website featuring upcoming classes (it should be sortable to show past classes too), and you can even do articles after classes highlighting an attendee or two - what they learned, what they did, what they thought of the experience etc.
Let's face it, where you live matters to you - and it should. Why not highlight a local cause you're supporting?
This makes you look good - it's ok to make yourself look good - and it shines a light on a local organization you care about in real life.
Go further by highlighting Local Connections™ and feature local events in a community calendar, we have an app for that ;)
Don't forget that the blog lives on your website and follow our suggested approach to post and distribute content online.
