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4th Qt Activities – Finish the Year Strong!
by Jessica Buchholz, Events Coordinator | October 4, 2023
| The last three months of the calendar are upon us, and this is the time where businesses need to focus on traffic, exposure, and sales to finish the year strong. Using recent market analysis data, we are spotting shifts in the market landscape that businesses need to account for. The outreach shifts, when coupled with event opportunities could help your business enhance profitability over the next ninety days. Let’s cover these opportunities one by one: Fall cooler weather adjustments: Fall weather is a little cooler, which means that people can walk and linger downtown in a more comfortable environment. It also means that the sun sets a little earlier each night. Look at your building exterior. How can you design and light your windows to make your business easier to understand and to welcome customers more effectively? Can you add outdoor seating? Are you able to welcome dog walkers? Will you adjust your market messaging to highlight indoor and outdoor assets for your business? Look at your building exterior critically, and think through how you can use your “cover” to encourage people read your “book”. Tracking athletic calendars: This is really low hanging fruit for many businesses. Targeting athletic events with geofencing, sponsorships, targeted social media ads, window decorations, traditional media buys and more can help you guide folks attending athletic events to your door. Whether we are talking about Emporia High School athletics, home games for Emporia State University, or people traveling through on their way to or from the Chiefs game, understanding athletic schedules (and how to reach fans) is an important part of marketing outreach. Click HERE for Emporia State Athletics. Click HERE for Emporia High School Athletics. Click HERE for the Chiefs schedule. Veterans Banners: Each year, the City of Emporia and Emporia State University work with Emporia Main Street to display Veterans Banners. When banners go up, we have families descend on downtown for smaller “reunions” and pedestrian traffic trends upward as people view those honored. This is a great time to note your business as “veteran owned”. Emporia Main Street through our Fab Lab has produced a “Veteran Owned Business” poster that can help people identify with your business. CLICK HERE, or stop by the Emporia Main Street office to pick one up. Market to our Veterans Banner visitors that “while you are in our core” that your business should be a stop. First Friday’s with the Emporia First Friday group: Kaila Mock and Joel Smith do a wonderful job with First Friday events, and your business can support their organization while also encouraging traffic. CLICK HERE for Emporia First Friday information, and consider sponsoring EFF activities. Halloween Activities: There are SO many things going on this Halloween that Emporia Main Street created a special web page for activities CLICK HERE. Your business can host specialized costume parties, promote your candy/costume options, or you can participate in the downtown Trick or Treat; which is a great way to introduce people to your business and showcase what you have to offer (CLICK HERE). When used properly, Halloween activities can help collect customer information and pull customers to you for the Christmas shopping season. Hispanics of Today and Tomorrow’s Dia de los Muertos: HOTT works with Emporia Main Street each year for a growing Day of the Dead festival and parade. You can act as a vendor for Dia de los Muertos (CLICK HERE), but you can also position your business to welcome crowds through the inclusion of ofrendas (or offering elements of ofrendas for sale), and showcasing visible support. The crowds brought downtown by this are our version of “stocking the pond”; how do you plan on fishing for customers? Emporia State University Homecoming: Hornet Nation will head back to the nest on October 28th (I think everything is happening all at once on October 28th). This is a great time to welcome ESU alumni back to town. Your business can help homecoming by actively ENCOURAGING alumni to head back to Emporia for the multitude of festivities. More traffic from more visitors equals opportunities for more sales. CLICK HERE for ESU Homecoming details. Veteran’s Day Activities: Think about veterans discounts, support elements for the crowds attending the Veteran’s Parade, enticements for folks that participate in Freedom Fest and more! As the Founding City of Veterans Day, we have the capacity to draw people in from the region, and your business has a role to play in encouraging traffic through your customer base. Thanksgiving: This holiday often gets missed as an opportunity by businesses, but it really shouldn’t be overlooked. If you sell food/ingredients, Thanksgiving could be a time for you to promote your favorite recipes to the public (that use your products). Decorations, interior upgrades (for those hosting guests) and more should be part of targeted sales outreach. Traditional restaurants can highlight the day before Thanksgiving (when nobody wants to cook). Bars and entertainment venues can highlight their role as gathering places for people to reconnect. Service businesses can provide information to families that are gathering to make decisions about investments, healthcare, legal issues and more. Retailers can also provide “wish lists” with QR codes leading to their websites for families looking for “Christmas gift ideas.” Don’t forget Thanksgiving in your seasonal plans!!! Small Business Saturday: The Saturday after Thanksgiving will be filled with opportunities to support small businesses through the Emporia Main Street Elf Hunt and a variety of other associated activities. Make sure you are independently reaching out to your customers and potential visitors to make sure they “shop small” all holiday season, but they make a day of it in Emporia! Carriage Rides: Horse drawn carriage rides are very popular in downtown Emporia! The event is so popular that we worked with ride providers to run two carriages this year as opposed to just one. This low speed nostalgic activity allows people to check out store fronts, grab something to eat/drink before the ride, and do some shopping downtown before and after. It is absolutely critical that your storefront is lit and active during rides to entice later night shopping. Quarter Mania: This community favorite event allows businesses of all sizes to highlight their products and services while getting paid for it! Quarter Mania is a “bingo meets an auction” style event that gives local businesses the opportunity to talk about themselves, their products, and services they provide to a captive audience during the heart of the Christmas shopping season. Getting the word out to a target audience is a great way to boost holiday sales! Check the calendar of events above for dates, and check emporiamainstreet.com for additional details. Sip N Shop: We tested the “Sip N Shop” concept this summer, and the overall feedback was very positive. There are some adjustments we will make (staggering gift certificate giveaway opportunities, for example), and we have “best practices” guides so participating businesses can maximize the impact of participation. Whereas some events are “stocking the pond” by putting mass customer groups in proximity to businesses, this is more of a “register ringer” event designed specifically to encourage spending at participating businesses. Market Adjustments: Placer Data allows Emporia Main Street to track changes in visitor traffic from 2017 to the present, and within 72 hours of an activity. Our most recent analysis is showing some fairly significant shifts that may encourage businesses to adjust their market outreach, verbiage, and targeted regions. If you understand the market, you can better understand how your business can entice people within the market to spend with your business. We will use bulk geographical data in some of the findings below, but we can provide an individual analysis to your specific business upon request (it can help).  Geographic market shifts are occurring: In the image above you can see green, gray, and brown areas. Green areas are an indicator that we are increasing traffic from those zones/zip codes. Grey areas are neutral (statistically speaking, we have about the same visits as last year). Brown areas are locations where we are seeing a decrease in visitations. Marketing often requires us to adjust to trends in consumer traffic and find ways to attract people that are more likely to visit your business. How are you targeting the green areas?  Psychographic shifts: Psychographics is a fancy word for “How people think”. Decreases in certain population segments, and increases in other segments can generate shifts in how businesses conduct outreach. We’ve seen a decrease in the 18-22 age populace lately, and that means that some business models will need to adapt to other segments of the market to maintain sales volume. Below, you can click on some of the market segment data that you can use to adjust your messaging. These are some of the dominant psychographic profiles in the region: College Towns Rustbelt Traditions In Style Set to Impress Midlife Constants Old and Newcomers Forging Opportunity Dorms to Diplomas CLICK HERE to read through all psychographic profile groups. |
 Hours, consistency, collaboration, and ease of use: How easy is it for people to spend dollars with you? Do you have a robust online presence? Are your hours both convenient and consistent? When do you plan to extend hours for holiday shoppers (usually sometime in November)? HERE’S THE BIG QUESTION: How do you plan to collaborate with other unique businesses in the area to form a better “destination vibe”?If you look at the map information in the “geographic market shifts” section, you will notice that some folks drive to our community from a distance. It’s rare that people will drive an hour to do “just one thing”. We generally subscribe to the “rule of four” which states that for every hour people drive, you need to give them four hours of stuff to do. Your business probably isn’t going to provide four hours of stuff to do on your own, so how do you plan on collaborating with events, other businesses, and area anchors to provide a destination.  |
| Have you accessed your market data?: The information above is a broad brush stroke for the area. Individual businesses and areas of the community may have different traffic patterns, or may be more susceptible to market changes. If you are an Emporia Main Street member, you have free access to some phenomenal data resources, and access to a team that can help you both interpret information and make strategic adjustments. All you have to do is ask. CLICK HERE to set up a market analysis visit. |