There is a troubling pattern on the east side, one that might be repeating itself elsewhere, but my neighborhood is where I see it. The pattern goes like this; have an idea for a business, move on it before it’s fully developed, execute it half-heartedly, wait for dollars to flow through the door, close up shop and bitterly blame the neighborhood for not supporting you. Now businesses fail for all sorts of reasons but the one consistent, recurring factor in those failures is a lack of advertising, marketing and promotion.

I understand that print and broadcast advertising is expensive – our ad budget was the first thing to go when Homespun’s loan application was denied. But just because you can’t afford to execute big ad campaigns doesn’t mean you can’t promote your business. Rather than shell out big bucks for ad buys we decided to take a more punk rock approach, or as some call it, “street-level marketing.”

It’s pretty simple – step one, design a flyer. Step two, print said flyer. Step three, place said flyer in places where you think your customers will see it. Repeat as needed. A couple hundred bucks and a couple of days of driving around the city or neighborhood, depending on your reach and you’ve just significantly increased awareness of your business. We went crazy and had posters printed so we could put them up in public places and catch the attention of passersby. Another couple hundred bucks got us 2,500 door hangers which are being placed on nearly every front door in Irvington proper as well as parts of surrounding neighborhoods.

The door hanger includes a coupon good for the first month of business because we know that retail lives and dies with the neighborhood. It’s not expensive and it’s not sophisticated but almost no one in our neighborhood will be able to say they didn’t know that we were here. No matter how good the idea, how well you execute it, or how well known you are, you still have to get to the shopper.