Hey. I’m Bob Negen. And in this episode, I’m gonna share with you the foot traffic formula. It’s a formula, a system to proactively drive traffic into your store.

So the foot traffic formula, what is it? You see, the problem that I see often is people are looking for ideas. They’re looking for tactics. They want to do, you know, oh, I need, I need some, new customers.

So they try this thing or, you know, I I wanna have a promotion and so I try this thing. But there’s no overarching strategy. There’s no process. But once you understand the process, the formula, you can start to focus on the individual parts and make those parts more effective.

And when those parts become more effective, the whole becomes a lot more effective. It is the power of geometric growth. So what I’m suggesting is when you understand the system, when you understand the formula, you are no longer trying a little of this, a little of that. Oh, this sounds interesting.

Oh, I’m gonna try. Maybe you do this. You get really, really serious about building a marketing plan and executing that marketing plan. And when you get serious, good things happen.

So what is the four, foot traffic formula? Well, there’s five, ingredients in the foot traffic formula. Actually, four and five are the same, but let’s get into it. So the first step in the foot traffic formula is to get new customers.

Now a lot of people make the mistake of focusing all of their marketing efforts and all of their marketing dollars on getting new customers. They buy a lot of advertising.

They do a lot of, you know, they spend money hoping to get new customers. So all of that energy goes into new customers, and new customers are the lifeblood of any business. You need new customers, but the but the the the focus, the emphasis in your marketing efforts should really be on what happens after you get new customers. You need to get new customers, but the real money follows after you get those customers. So let me just share with you something I learned from, my colleague Jay Abraham. There’s three ways to grow your business, get new customers, increase the average ticket and get your customers to come back in again and again and again. And of those three ways, the third way more transactions per customer.

That’s where the real money is. The real money is once you get a customer, how do you increase the number of visits? So the first step is get new customers. And one of the things you’re gonna learn if you have, the retail mastery system or if you sign up for the marketing mentor program is that your, your efforts to get new customers do not have to be digital.

In fact, one of the things that we teach, one of the things we’re known for are these incredibly counterintuitive offline old school with a new twist marketing ways to get new customers, gift certificate marketing, endorse mailing, cause marketing, you know, network marketing, all of these things. So step number one, I’m sorry, I got I got off track. Step number one is get new customers. You have to have processes and systems to get new customers.

The second step in the foot traffic formula, the second ingredient is you have to give people a great experience when they come into your store. You know, there’s an old saying in advertising that nothing kills a bad product faster than great advertising.

So if you’re spending time, energy and money to acquire new customers, those people come in the store and get a lousy experience.

You’ve essentially shot yourself in the foot. You hope that you made the money back from that customer. You you you hope that you got the customer acquisition cost back, but it’s not the way to be a smart marketer. So that’s a whole another topic, of course, how to give your customers a great experience. We will spend some time with it on it in the marketing mentor program, but it’s a critical part of the formula.

Without it, the formula doesn’t work. The third ingredient in the foot traffic formula, the third step is to get their contact information. So let’s back up. You get a new customer.

They come into your store. I mean, they come into your store. They’re a new customer, and you give them a great first experience.

They’re excited. They found a place. You know, people come into your store. They go, wow.

This is a great store. They get a great experience. They’re fired up. They’ve got a brand new local store that they’re hoping they’re going to love.

So when you’ve given them that great first experience and you invite them to join your loyalty program, you have now taken the first step in a long term relationship.

Think about this. When somebody signs up for your loyalty program and they give you their contact information, name, birthday, email address, text number, physical address, whatever, however it works, that’s a different conversation.

When they do that, they’re figuratively raising their hand and saying, yes, you can market to me. Yes, I want to have a relationship with you.

That’s the holy grail right there. They’re saying market to me. But then that’s step three, step four and five is get them back in again and again.

And so once you have their contact information now, you can proactively communicate When you have somebody following you on social media, you can communicate, but it’s not nearly as tight. It’s not nearly as efficient as if you have an email address, a text number, a physical address. You control the relationship.

So what do you do after that will determine how many transactions per customer. Right? So this is what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to when we talk about foot traffic formula, the number one way to drive lots and lots and lots of traffic is not by acquiring new customers.

It’s by taking those customers you already have. They’re already on your list. They’re on the way to becoming raving fans and give them reasons to come back in again and again and again. So how do you do that?

How do you build the relationships?

You build the relationship by, first of all, doing lots of high quality content marketing.

You want to talk to your customers, whether it’s via email, whether it’s via social media, whether it’s on your, on your website, whether it’s through live social selling. You want to give your customers information that’s valuable to them to inform and or entertain.

So I’m just gonna use an example. Let’s say you have a bike shop. Your content could be about how to, what are the best trails in our community? How do you tune up your bike in the spring?

You know, what’s the best helmet? What are the big reports? What’s funny and interesting? What video should you watch?

You know, all of the things that make a bike rider go, Oh, I’m reading this. I like these people. I’m watching this. I trust these people.

I’m listening to this. This is super cool and interesting. You see, because whenever you do that, whenever you give people, your customers a piece of high quality content, you are building an emotional bank account. You’re bringing them closer to you emotionally.

And when they become close to you emotionally, you achieve this beautiful thing called Toma, top of mind awareness.

So think about this for a moment. Here’s how you know if you have Toma. You have achieved Toma when your customers have to buy something that you sell.

Don’t think, where should I go?

They think, how can I get to your store? So I’ll use an example from a pet store. So my local pet store here must love dogs. They have Toma.

So when I need anything for our dog, Tucker, we don’t think, should we go to Chewy? Should we pick up food at the grocery store? Should we go to PetSmart? No.

We’re just gonna go see Tanya.

Right? That’s Toma. And so Toma will wrap up that business for you, and that’s incredibly valuable.

But then the next part of the foot traffic formula is how do you get those people who are already your raving fans to come into your store even more times to generate more traffic. And you do this through promotions and special events. You do this by having fun, interesting, cool stuff happening in your store, on your website, whether it’s digital or physical. But you’re giving them a reason to interact with you and your brand. You’re giving them a reason to participate.

You’re giving them more reasons to buy from you on top of what you’ve achieved through Toma. So do you see what you’ve learned here today? You have seen the ingredients in a formula that will allow you to really, truly, literally create traffic at will.

When you know what to do, when you know the formula and you know how to do it, when you know the strategies and the tactics, when you know the promotions, when you know the customer acquisition strategies, all of a sudden you are no longer doing a little of this, a little of that. You are no longer wandering in the wilderness of marketing.

You are now a tightly focused planned marketer who is intelligently, strategically building their sales and building their brand. It’s a beautiful thing. Once you’ve got a hot tight marketing plan, you’re gonna watch your business explode.

And the foot traffic formula is the essence of it.