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How to be the best butcher in the world
Facebook ads – very few butchers use Facebook ads. Nigel Botterill feels that this represents a huge missed opportunity.
It can be very successful in attracting new customers and it is easy to exclude vegetarians. You can target by geography and the algorithm that determines what you see on Facebook is very sophisticated. Your posts may have low reach but you should use Facebook ad. This is low cost and can be highly targeted by day of the week, time of day, audience and demographic. If you have customers' email addresses you can load them and contact them through Facebook ads.
An optician who opened a new outlet used Facebook competition for a free pair of designer glasses every year for five years. The cost to him would be £1200 over five years but when people see that on Facebook that is almost irresistible. It is easy to enter on Facebook and the consequence was 350 entries in 3 weeks. The winner's prize cost him £350 but what happens is that the 349 runners up get an email. That says congratulations 'you have won one of our runners up prizes. Here is £50 off your first pair of glasses'.
That generated £27,000 of sales and the optician has gone from a standing start to having a full diary because he used Facebook ads. This is a big opportunity for businesses like butchers too.
Recognise that what happens in your business and to your sales volume is up to you. You have control over it, you have responsibility for it. There are things that you can do and make happen.
You have to be found. Does Google find and recognise your butchers business?
Google searches using Google places. You should claim your space on Google My Business.
Enter address, opening hours, phone number, link to own website and photos. The more information the higher up you will appear.
Reviews help a lot and raise profile. It is really easy with a small number of hours work, you could absolutely dominate the Google presence. This all comes totally free.
Reviews can be easy to gather because all butchers have lots of customers who think the world of you. They might buy at supermarkets from time to time but they come to you for everything that is kind of special. Lots of them come regularly but you haven't done anything to stimulate reviews.
Reviews have a big impact over time and does a lot for your staff as well because you will be amazed by what reviewers say about you, they do love you. But you won't get reviews if you haven't asked your customers to submit reviews.
When someone new comes to your area and they find a butcher online that has 350 reviews and is a five star rating with lots of pictures, then you become the obvious place to go and visit.
Doing the hard work that makes the selling easy.
Bananarama syndrome – where people do the right thing, but don't do it right. As Bananarama sang in the summer of 1983, they knew back then that it ain't what you do it is the way that you do it, that's what gets results. Google My Business is an example, you can do it but don't do it right.
How do you keep up communication up after the transaction? I would have a printed newsletter because a small run digital print is really cheap. I have lots of interesting things happening, the people that are working for me, I would give of myself in a newsletter so that they know about my life, my family and where I am travelling to. Let them know that I have attended new product demonstrations and what is happening in the economy.
All it takes is a single sheet of A3 folded, that gives four sides of A4. You would have it in your shop and send it to regular customers so that you are communicating. You are relying on your customers to come to your shop and you need to have things happening in your market to come to your shop.
The real smart butchers whose businesses are going to grow, not just consolidate and sustain, are the ones who are getting ahead on communications. They keep up the communication after the transaction.
Think about the other guy first, I now want to talk about deliveries.
Office workers are potential customers but are not your customers because you are not open at the right time. They would like to be, the majority of the population would much prefer to get their meat from a local butcher, it is just that they can't get to you when you are open.
If I was running a butchers shop, I would be offering a delivery service. I would not get too techy about it, I would have aspirations to take orders online but I would start on the telephone. I would talk about it in my printed newsletter, I would send out on emails and I would put some posters up in my shop. Talking about next week and that we can deliver your meat.
All that they would have to do is order the day before and we would deliver wherever they are within a range. You will start getting customers who are not even in your area because you would deliver to places of work for instance. You would not just deliver to houses, you will go to where people are, word will travel and when you deliver the meat you will put a little card in it with a photo of the butcher in your team who has made up the order and you could drop a recipe in with it and an offer for delivery next week. You would start to build your list.
It irritates me when people are on the news talking about the demise of the high street. The reality is that so many of the businesses on the high street have done nothing to try and respond.
They have just sat there like victims with it all happening to them. But you have a lot of choice with what you do in your business. Is it a bit of work? Yes, but it is not a lot of cost. You already have a phone, you need a pad of paper and how hard is it to test the water?
You don't need to buy a van to begin with, just start to get it out there, try it and see. You have staff during quieter times during the day who could get the message out there and try it to see. You need contact details of customers, it is already easier to sell if they already know you.
I would look at things like leaflet drops in your local area. Roughly £700 can get you 10,000 leaflets printed and delivered. First I'd go out to existing customers, I would go to big businesses where there are lots of people working and ask if you can go to their canteen. I would make myself look as butchery as I could. I would have a nice pop up stand that I bought for £70 and ask if I can stand in their canteen for two hours at lunchtime. Explain the convenience of having meat delivered, register here and we will send you the details.
Your phone starts to ring and you start to build your business and you take responsibility rather than sitting back and letting things happen to you. You are thinking other guy first but the market you want are busy people who would buy from you if you made it easy. That is why everyone buys from Amazon because they make it easy for customers. Most other businesses have forgotten that.
Think about your customer and how they would like to order their meat. They are used to ordering online, they order their supermarket shopping online but they would much rather get their meat from you. If you allow them to do that, that is what they do.
Send emails to your customers, don't leave money on the table, don't leave sales for other people to pick up. You are supporting the Lidl's, Aldi's and Tesco's to take your business because you are not fighting back! It is like turning out for a football match with no defence.
Innovate and add value. You could try a subscription service – you could do this at a local level taking a certain amount of money every month by direct debit.
It is not where I would start. I would start with the other things that I have talked about, get you on Facebook, build your contacts list and the other things but when I have that running I could do subscription business. There is value in it for them and you are getting certainty of sales. It is a process whereby customers get what they want, it works for vegetable boxes – they have built themselves up and you could do as well at a local level. It just needs a little bit of thinking.
For some you will think that's a lot of work, but others will do it and build themselves a future.
Hopefully there are one or two things there that have given you cause for thought.
Attachments:
Attachments:
Attachments:
• THE_BEST_BUTCHER_IN_THE_WORLD.pdf
Attachments:
• THE_BEST_BUTCHER_IN_THE_WORLD.pdf
Attachments:
• THE_BEST_BUTCHER_IN_THE_WORLD.pdf
Attachments: