Case Study: How to Scale a Local Business with Marketing, Without Losing the Local Charm

Consumers want it all! They want convenience, access, good prices, excellent service, favorable policies, etc. And frankly, they deserve it!

By creating a cohesive omnichannel experience for a set of local neighborhood stores, we were able to deliver all the convenience and affordability of a national chain, without losing the intimacy, connection, and personalization of shopping local.

Before BOM: These 3 neighborhood wine shops, all under the same name and the same business, had 3 different websites, 3 different management structures, and no cohesive brand presence. They had barely any online presence (even locally) and were really only known if you drove by the brick & mortar locations. And they had a business problem...they were struggling to grow.

How We Used Marketing to Scale Their Business

In 2019 we started to build! Over the course of a year, we did the following:

• Consolidated all 3 sites under 1 branded website: www.thewineoutlets.com

• Made all inventory available in real-time online

• Optimized for desktop and mobile use

• Created an app for IOS and Android with all of the same capabilities as the website

• Launched a social media strategy and plan for each store on the key platforms consumers care about

• Initiated local partnerships in the community with groups, influencers, and charities

• Launched a consistent, segmented email and SMS strategy

• And so much more!

All of these efforts led to year over year growth in sales and profits and that growth has continued every year since!

Our next steps will be to dive headfirst into mobile app marketing, to surprise and delight their customers even further! The sky is the limit, even for a local business! You just have to know which levers to pull and where to focus.

Marketing can scale any local business. Let's talk about yours!

Set Up Time To Talk About Your Growth Goals

Hear What the Clients Have to Say

Testimonial from the Owner's Group

“We needed to figure out exactly what it is that people love about our business so much, and how to then communicate that back to our customers and prospects. We thought we knew the answer but had run into a roadblock trying to articulate it in a few words to give it the most impact. Given that every team member wears many hats (as in most small businesses) we were always too busy to sit down and dig into our consumers and our brand. Jules stepped into the breach and helped us identify our core brand elements and create a really great brand strategy. Looking at the business with a fresh, critical eye, she crystallized the value our customers get from us, turned it into an actionable plan, and helped us develop a clear understanding of how to use those elements to attract more customers. The best part of working on our brand strategy with Jules was the knowledge she brought to every conversation and the ease with which she helped us understand what it really means to focus on and achieve brand-building. We are not professional marketers and sometimes (really, most times) the marketing lingo can be like a foreign language. Not only did Jules explain everything clearly and help us make sense of the true value of our brand, but she did it as a real partner. Her commitment was and remains impressive!

We could tell she not only has a wealth of experience, but she loves what she does! She anticipated our questions and made us better marketers. We now use the Jules-developed brand strategy work across the business. We updated our messaging in-stores, we launched a truly modern website that our customers love and we were even able to take the plunge with an app because that extension made sense within our brand strategy. It really all DOES start with a brand strategy - who knew!”

Testimonial from Local Store Manager in Northern VA

"As a business, we've always sent emails to our customers, but we were not consistent with it because we did not have a clear strategy. We typically went week to week and used a very basic format that could be tough to read sometimes. But we didn't know where to start to improve our emails, we just knew we had to use that type of marketing to sell to our customers. After Jules built our website, she created an email strategy that works in tandem with our website and in-store branding strategies. It turns out this strategy gave us the ability to talk to all our customers throughout the pandemic, attract new customers to our website and now our stores, and learn even better the messaging that gets the best reactions. Now we have user-friendly templates that actually give our customers an awesome experience.

We've always had the wine knowledge, but now it's packaged in a great format with images, product links, and the ability to purchase products right away - so many great improvements and all as the pandemic took off. Since we started this email strategy, we have nearly doubled our customer lists and loyalties through e-commerce engagement across all stores and we increased our conversation rates by 50%. I think it's safe to say this works! ​

At every bump in the road, Jules explained how to apply our brand strategy to reach our email goals and she worked with us to pivot quickly while also ensuring we used data to make our decisions. She helps us understand and use the art and the science of marketing and we now have a great planning process and smooth execution every week."

Testimonial from Operations Manager

"For years we barely played in the website game. We had a “website” but it got no traffic. We had separate websites for each location, with only a few very basic pages for each. We dreamed about combining it, professionalizing it, etc. but it was too much for us, and the web gurus were, well, web gurus, not brand experts. After Jules organized the brand work, we realized one cohesive website was exactly what we needed; we just didn't have the expertise or understanding of how to create an impactful and complete website that our customers would find not just engaging but useful, too. Without the revamped website we knew we would continue to limit ourselves to the strategy of word-of-mouth marketing, which worked for us in the past but kept us from taking our business to the next level! 

Jules helped us determine that we needed a fully functional e-commerce site to be a step ahead of our competition and to show our customers that we “show up” for them as they need. She took the project from start to finish faster than we thought possible. She managed a website developer switch mid-project and continues to manage our strategy and keep it integrated with our brand strategy. The development of our site could not have come at a better time because it was completed and launched at the beginning of April 2020...which just so happened to be when all businesses were forced to close due to the pandemic...talk about excellent timing. She pivoted quickly, worked with the developers and hosting site to accomplish every need we had and we successfully continued to serve our customers throughout the entire pandemic. Not many businesses can say that! And we did all this while adhering to the highest safety standards of course. 

Ultimately, our site allowed us to continue giving our customers the wine they love and we were able to bring in new customers immediately as we were the only store in the area that was ready to go and serve customers despite market shutdowns. She helped us build an awesome website and stay alive during the pandemic, but even more than that, she helped us impress our customers and build more loyalty through our quick response to the changing times. Not to mention...she even built us an app with all our inventory updated in real-time. Jules' clearly listened to our needs and matched them perfectly with customer expectations and market trends. She adapts projects quickly and keeps on track. It’s so clear she cares about helping us deliver tremendous value for our customers."