No More Guesses

Now that you ve set up your retail space or your campaign office, you are finally in business. But you have some questions. Like where are your customers And how do you reach them And what neighborhoods do you drop leaflets in You want to know where to knock on doors And you definitely want to know how to harness your current customer base to attract new customers.

Get a wall map. Not one of that world maps with a picture of a panda in China and a camel across the Sahara. Get a wall map relevant to your business district.

Or your campaign district. Most political organizers understand how vital a wall map is for a winning campaign I know Ive been through my share of them, but few business people have caught on to how their strategy could be made more effective through a wall map visualization. I talked to Kent Hargesheimer of Geo Printer, a wall map printing company. Here are five reasons he cites that your business could use a wall map

1. You have people delivering pizzas or crown jewels, political flyers or newspapers Let your staff instantly find where they are going. Wall maps are ideal for deciding where to go before leaving the store or depot.

2. Wall maps help you plan. You can plot where the competition is, where your customers are…in fact, you can do entire SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats analysis based on geography. If you plot demographic data, such as you might find at Catosphere Demographics, you could easily see where your best target customers are located.

3. Wall maps can help you define delivery or sales territories to maximize revenues. Use erasable markers to redefine territories as need…such as when you add new customers to the map.

4. A wall map can actually be a draw for walk in traffic. If your map shows where everything else in the neighborhood is, people will drop in to your store to find out
where other stores and services are located. Even better, let people stick a small colored sticker on the map to mark their spot…and gather intelligence from them about where your customers comes from.

5. Local wall maps are a great addition to the office decor. They make your employees feel a little more connected to the community and can also instill a sense of who the customer is and why they are there to serve the customer, right

Before printing a wall map, you will need to design the map. There are many great mapping software and services options available online.

A map on the wall motivates staff and keeps them organized. It connects you to your customers. Posting a map on the wall says, We are in business and ready to conquer. Just dont try putting up a map of the world…at least, not to start with.