3 Lessons: From Brick-&-Mortar to Online Biz

Three lessons from brick-&-mortar business, three graffitied doorways in a brick facade.

Before Abby Kerr Ink, I was a brick-and-mortar retailer. I owned THE BLISSFUL in Canton, Ohio {my hometown}. It was a funky, French-inspired lifestyle boutique. In four short years, we managed to win some national attention, as well as lots of nice local press.

At the risk of ticking off some of my competition — oh, what the heck, I’ll risk it — I’ll tell you that we were hands down the coolest shop in town. {Admittedly, one of very few indie shops in town.}

We had a gorgeous online presence {site no longer live} and a blog whose archives you can still check out here. We sold and shipped internationally through our online boutique, though the great majority of our business was done through our brick-and-mortar storefront.

When I voluntarily closed the shop in February 2010, we left a lot of customers, friends, and fans wanting more. {I say, that’s the only way to make an exit.}

In the new landscape of my online business, I’m often asked how the lessons I learned in four years of successful offline biz apply to the online biz world.

Here are the 3 best lessons I learned in brick-and-mortar business and how they translate into doing business online.

Brick-&-Mortar Business Lesson 1:

Once you’ve found an advertising venue that works for you, it’s impossible to spend too much on advertising. Every spare penny you throw at a good advertising venue {in the form of a well-crafted ad} will pay off.

Translation to Doing Business Online:

Find a marketing venue — or two, or three — that work for you, and work them for all they’re worth. It’s better to be absolutely stellar in TWO places than to be mediocre in six places.

The Big Difference:

Invested dollars. I can think of no reason why an online business would have to spend as many dollars advertising as their offline counterparts would have to when there are so many free social media marketing tools {Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.} you can use. However, you could look at the time you’ll spend marketing your online business as a form of investment.

Brick-&-Mortar Business Lesson 2:

Brand proposition is ev-ery-thing. If you lead with a strong brand identity from the very beginning and put the protection and elevation of your brand at the forefront of every move you make, you will always be absolutely memorable and to your right people — addictively compelling.

Translation to Doing Business Online:

This lesson totally translates to online biz. A well-conceptualized brand identity that extends through all facets of an online business — visual design, copy, USP/brand promise, etc. — signals to site visitors that their time spent on-site may be worth it somehow. Plus, a strong brand identity automatically makes a business memorable. No matter whether the visitor’s memory is positive or negative — it’s most important to be remembered at all!

The Big Difference:

Human, face-to-face interaction in a brick-and-mortar setting puts a brand proposition constantly at risk. An employee might say something or do something or even wear something that compromises brand integrity. When a business is operated solely online, it’s much easier to monitor interactions, track site visitor/customer experience, and run blind surveys.

Brick-&-Mortar Business Lesson 3:

Satisfied customers are your best marketing and PR team. Keep a core of key customers happy and your business has a good chance of being successful — even wildly so.

Translation to Doing Business Online:

This all goes back to the right people thing. You’ll never please anybody or ring all the bells just right no matter whether you’re doing business offline or online, but the fact is, you can please some of the people most of the time. And those people are your right people. Focus on optimizing their experience and you’ll get it right enough.

And the really cool thing about those right people are the friends and family they talk to about your business, some of them who are also your right people.

Remember: everybody loves to talk about themselves, and if you can situate your brand as part of your right people’s lives and ideal selves, you’re on a quick path to something good.

The Big Difference:

The biggest difference is that in the brick-and-mortar world, you very often don’t get to choose your customers the way you can when you work mostly online. You can’t choose which prospects get to walk in the front door of your brick-and-mortar business, but neither can you choose which visitors land on your site and decide to click around.

However, with an online business, you can build in a more intentional filtering system like the one Naomi Niles describes in Filtering & Attracting Your Right Clients and Projects, her latest guide for designers and other creative service professionals.

With a brick-and-mortar business, you can position your brand all day long to attract your Right People, but in the end it’s much more difficult to stay focused on them as opposed to whomever’s standing in front of you yapping the loudest that day.

In the comments, I’d love to hear what lessons you’ve learned from doing business in a brick-and-mortar setting and how you compare or contrast them with your experience of doing business online. Also, feel free to take exception to any of the insights I’ve posed here. I’m interested in your thoughts.

P.S. The link above for Naomi Niles’ latest guide is an affiliate link. One read-through of Naomi’s sales page for Filtering & Attracting Your Right Clients and Projects and I knew this work was for me, even though I’m not a graphic designer! With a price that hard to beat, it’s tough to think of a reason why you wouldn’t want to turn more of your Right People into paying clients. Think about it.