Show me a business owner who has forgotten why they chose their first location and I will show you a person with a serious memory problem.
Last month’s column discouraging language redundancies notwithstanding, I concur with the wisdom of every real estate agent you’ve ever met who surely told you these decisions fall on three factors: location, location and location.
Aside from the time invested in looking at properties, there were myriad other considerations that went into location decisions, including:
●Leasing terms
●Square footage
●Available tax incentives
●Direction and density of traffic
●Proximity to major roads
●Adjacent and supporting tenants
●Competitors’ locations
●Landlord’s reputation in the market
●Market demographics
●Compatible design
After all that work, ask yourself, are your clients/customers able to find you? Seems silly to ask, but don’t be too sure.
For several years, a national home and garden type of store has included sales circulars in our Sunday newspapers. On more than one occasion, I was drawn to a featured item. I would have made the trip to purchase the item … had I known where the store was. That’s right. The ads failed to include locations, or even a phone number or website for determining such.
The store went to the effort of printing enticing, glossy circulars and the expense of distribution through local newspapers, yet, who knows what the oversight cost them?
Depending on who’s definition you use, Metro Atlanta includes as many as 39 counties, encompassing more than 8,000 square miles. That’s a big chunk of market to ignore if you are only counting on those who’ve driven past your business to know where it is. Creating highly generalized collateral material can be penny-wise, but pound-foolish.
Increasingly location is not just brick and mortar. It’s about whether your customers can find you. That includes your company’s internet location.
At least once a year, business owners are behooved to review for clarity and content not just their printed and advertising materials, but also their online content. Online consistency, especially related to names and addresses, can boost digital search engine optimization (SEO), meaning, elevate your placement when customers search online for your services. A deeper exploration of SEO is a topic for another day, but for now, the takeaway is that inconsistencies can actually hinder customers’ abilities to locate you online.
Survey your company’s content for consistencies in the following, from your team’s business cards to email signatures to online profiles and V-card attachments. Consider an internal style book that mandates how all internal and external communication will uniformly treat addresses, names, phone numbers etc.
For example, let’s say that Acme Company, LLP is located at 100 Main Street, Suite 201-B, Northwest, Marietta, Georgia, 30000. Acme’s leadership team has several options. They should select, communicate and most importantly, stick with:
●Will it be Acme or ACME; Company or Co., LLP or L.L.P.?
●Street or St.?
●Suite or Ste.?
●201B, 201 B or 201-B
●Northwest, N.W. (with periods) or NW (without periods.)
●Marietta, GA or Marietta GA (with or without a comma?) Ga.? Georgia?
●30000? Or 30000-1000?
For phone numbers, will it be (770) 555-1212? Or 770-555-1212? Or even 770.555.1212?
Regarding names, consider if employee profiles will include middle initials? Will there be a comma between last names and suffixes such as Jr. or III?
Consistency, as Oscar Wilde said, may be the last refuge of the unimaginative, but it remains the backbone of navigation.
Mary Smith Judd is a communications professional based in Marietta. As a writer, editor and project manager, she has worked with corporate leaders, attorneys and other professionals. Her work at the Fulton County Daily Report, the Florida Bar News and the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group has been honored with national and regional awards. Judd is the founder of Your Story Pros, a full-service creator of personal, family and corporate history content.