Beyond the Basement: The story of Ida Mae’s
Ida Mae’s (name changed to protect the client’s privacy) was a small bakery started by two retired nurses who launched their business with very little cash and a huge investment of “sweat equity.” The two women had found space for their business in the basement of an aging office building, which was located in the heart of a dying downtown area.
Originally constructed in the 1950’s as a four story office building, the building they chose for their business also housed an eclectic and ever-changing assortment of offices and shops in its attempt to remain viable in the midst of small scale urban decay. Most of the businesses that were tenants in the building were poorly funded start-ups who hoped to buck the trend of the downtown decline and make a go of it despite the odds.
The reason the women chose the location was simple; the rent was cheap. We’re not talking cheap as in “cheap rent,” we’re talking cheap as in “cheap suit.” There was a reason the rent was so cheap: To say the women had chosen a terrible location for Ida Mae’s would be an understatement. Even if the bakery had been located on one of the floors above ground, it still would not have had the benefit of foot traffic. Very few determined souls ventured downtown from the busy bypass that had drawn virtually every remaining retailer in town five miles to the west.
By locating their bakery in the basement, the owners had signed a lease on the worst spot within the worst building in a dying Rust Belt factory town.
Location wasn’t the only obstacle that Ida Mae’s needed to overcome. The bakery also had to contend with limited parking for their customers. The nearest parking area was located more than a half a block away, and it was a strictly enforced pay lot. Customers who wanted to visit the bakery would have to be unwavering to their mission. The little bakery would have to be their intended destination and they would have to be very determined to find and then reach the bakery.
Ida Mae’s had been in business for over a year when I entered the picture. It wasn’t pretty. The owners had been desperately trying to build their business on their own. Their first choice was to use word of mouth advertising, since their creations were truly above and beyond anything else available in the area. However, the ugly reality of the situation was the fact that customers are necessary to build a word of mouth campaign, and Ida Mae’s had very few customers. They had tried to attract those initial customers with a regular dose of print ads which was failing to deliver results. By the time I met with them, it was obvious that this hobby bakery was going under if business didn’t turn around quickly.
Ida Mae’s shoestring budget meant that we needed to create a tightly targeted marketing strategy. We couldn’t afford to waste our precious ad budget on spray and pray marketing tactics. Their advertising dollars were so limited that we needed a method of message delivery that provided maximum “bang for the buck.”
First, we identified the target market for the bakery. The two founders of Ida Mae’s had always loved baking but rarely had the time while pursuing their careers in nursing. Only upon their retirement from nursing and their headlong plunge into entrepreneurship were they able to bake to their hearts delight. So we chose to target working women who also didn’t have the time to pamper their families or friends with lavish home baked “goodies.”
The message we created spoke directly to these women’s desire to have their cake and eat it to, so to speak. They could work full time and still treat their friends and family to delicious, home-style baked goodies.
Once we identified our target audience, we then had to choose a media to deliver the message directly to these women. Because of our shoestring thin budget, we chose a small AM radio station which featured a nationally syndicated talk show as part of its programming. (Remember, this was in the days PRIOR to the internet.)
Due to the nature and content of the show, show’s audience was primarily women. Because this station only had about 10,000 listeners (it was the lowest rated station in the market), we were able to afford a schedule of ads airing exclusively during this show. By choosing a single show, we reached the same audience repeatedly with the carefully crafted messages while staying within the confines of Ida Mae’s extremely limited budget.
The campaign began in April and by the following August, the results were beginning to be seen. People were actually coming to the basement of this building in the middle of a dead downtown area in search of the bakery. By Thanksgiving, Ida Mae’s had a backlog of holiday orders. By Christmas, the bakery’s owners were actually looking forward to a first quarter slowdown and a return to “business as usual.”
In the book, I share with you the basis for the success of Ida Mae’s advertising campaign. While the Ida Mae story is now almost 20 years old, it’s a theme that has been repeated hundreds of times throughout my history of working with small businesses in creating effective advertising and marketing messages.
I chose to share Ida Mae’s story with you here because I have never seen a case, before or since, where the odds were stacked so heavily against success. Their location was horrid, their budget was tiny and the competition was fierce. The only glimmer of hope for their fledgling business was that they had a truly outstanding product.
Probably the biggest reason their story stands out in my mind is because of their awful location; hidden in a basement of an office building, with no signage, no parking and no other businesses to help draw foot traffic. When their business began to improve, there was no doubt that it was the advertising that had made the difference. However, had the women who founded Ida Mae’s not been creating culinary perfection combined with treating each and every customer who walked down those basement stairs as a long lost friend, then their advertising campaign wouldn’t have achieved anything other than accelerating the micro business’ demise.
Ida Mae’s built success within six months on an extremely limited budget by advertising on the lowest-rated station in the market. You can build a success story like that as well by using the principles in the book as well.
The journey begins by defining your target customer. Fortunately, now 2 decades later, we have the ability to micro-target your customer by using the internet. Never before in history have you been able to laser focus your marketing message and deliver it with the precision you can with an online campaign.
The biggest obstacle I face with clients is getting them to target their end customer. Too often I hear, "I want EVERYONE to be my customer."
Ida Mae’s didn’t want EVERYONE to be their customer. They wanted busy working mothers who loved to entertain and by focusing their message and choosing a delivery method not NEARLY as efficient as the internet, they were able to build their business exponentially over a short period of time.
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