A Classic SMB Internet Marketing Story – Our Friends’ Closet

I have had the pleasure of watching a small start-up business and those who are connected to it take the initiative to learn about Internet marketing including web site creation, search marketing, social media and much more. It has been a learning experience for the business owners themselves and even one spouse who has been bitten by the Internet marketing bug.

The business is a high end consignment shop in Raleigh, NC called “Our Friend’s Closet”. The owners are two women who decided that it would be good idea to open a shop that provided consignment opportunities for upscale clothing and accessories for women. I was asked to help out by a friend (one partner’s husband who has since channeled his inner Internet marketer). Please note that there has been no payment for my service or input. That’s not the norm, quite honestly, but in this case I was returning a favor to a friend.

When I first got involved the shop was promoting itself through paper fliers, word of mouth, some Craig’s List efforts and an early stage Facebook fan page. Considering this business is only 5 months old this was not a bad start.

This was the classic case of, what you don’t know can hurt you, as well. No one was aware of the Google Local Business Center. For a business that had no website this was some valuable information. Now they are aware but how much optimization of this listing for their consignment shop has gone on I can’t tell you. I do know that they have claimed their listing so they are safer than they were before.

And the website? Well, a few hours with GoDaddy and my friend can now add “has created a website” to his skill set (designers please stop snickering, it’s perfect for now). He has also gone through the process of waiting to be indexed and the site now ranks #88 for the term Raleigh consignment shop (if you check that and it’s not there that’s Google’s fickle nature).

So will a link or two from my blog help out the effort? We’ll see. I want them to succeed because they do good work so I’ll give it a try.

There is so much more for them to do but they are out of the gate. One thing I know they have discovered is that they didn’t know a lot about Internet marketing but now they know a lot more. They know it takes time and real work to succeed in the online marketing space. More importantly though, they know that they can do this on their own. They also know there is more to do and this isn’t a “set it and forget it” exercise. That’ s very cool.

Finally for the ladies, here’s the pitch. If you live in the Raleigh area make sure you stop by the nicest consignment shop you have ever seen. I bet you’ll be as surprised as I was.