It’s somewhat ironic that Jackson Heights (in Queens) and Brooklyn Heights took a similar path to gentrification. While Jackson Heights struggled more than Brooklyn Heights with the city-wide downturn in the 1980s-90s, both retained much of their residential charm. Both preserved their neighborhood character through the National Register of Historic Places.
After the registry and the overall decrease in crime across the city, Jackson Heights again became a magnet for younger families. Whether it was the historic charm or cultural diversity, it is hard to say.
One thing is true, Jackson Heights is an explosion of cultures. It is rare, even in this city, to find Indian, Greek, Middle Eastern, South American, and Mexican restaurants so close together.
With all this diversity, the key marketing challenge for many businesses in this neighborhood is standing out and commanding attention.
In a gentrified neighborhood, your challenge isn’t so much in targeting as it is in standing out. A superb web design can help you get your message out.
Strategy is a term that is misused often. A strategy is making a clear choice of between options. As a metaphor, I like to use a vacation as the example. The strategy is choosing where to go. The tactic is the means of transportation. Here, you need to evaluate if the agency you choose has a clear understand of where you are going and how it can deploy its tactics to help you win.
Sometimes marketing is an investment. Sometimes programs work. Sometimes, they fail. Regardless, you need a measurement plan in place to know which to kill and which to grow.
Learning is part of any marketing campaign. It is how you improve and grow. The market is constantly changing. You will be best suited to meet that change if you constantly testing.
Digital marketing is a diverse field. One group specializes on web design and another on social. If you need a specialized agency for each, the costs add up quickly. Each have overheads they need to cover. This is where a full service agency can help. Those overheads are shared the different disciplines. Now, one caveat, it is important to know that the full service agency can provide the same if not better quality as the specialized.
Large company solutions or carbon copies of other campaigns rarely work for small businesses. If you are seeking marketing help, make sure that the firm you chose has the experience in small business.
If a marketing firm will not share some of the risk with you, then they are not as vested in the outcome as you are.
According to Best Designs, original graphics are the most successful.
“Original graphics make up 40% of all successful visual content that accomplishes marketing goals, but 43% of marketers struggle with the consistent production of captivating visuals.”
Since we are communicating one message, the artwork that supports it must work very hard to support the message. This is where local market know-how can really help. Original photos and images of your business in Jackson Heights interacting with your neighborhood can add value.
It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Jackson Heights or at your business location.
Every email, no matter how trivial, should have a call to action. This is where all the hard work above pays off. If we omit one, we just wasted resources that could have been spent more cost effectively.
We cover email list building in great detail in our post on small business email marketing. Again, we will just hit the highlights here as it pertains to Jackson Heights. Every neighborhood has summer fairs. While these were severely impacted by COVID, in our post COVID world they should roar back with a vengeance. It would be smart to see if you could piggy-back off one or more of them.
Incentives, deals, free trials, and samples are all great options when developing your calls to action. See if you can partner with your neighbors to create a shared promotion. This way one shopper in Jackson Heights has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.
In a gentrified neighborhood, your challenge isn’t so much in targeting as it is in standing out. Local digital marketing can help you get your message out.
Look, you want any small business marketing partner vesting in your outcome. Marketing is risking. So, you shouldn't have to bear all the risk. Look for small business marketing help that is confident enough in their skills to own some of the risks. If they are, then you know they genuinely want to help your small business succeed.
Size and local knowledge matter. That's been proven, consistently. Therefore, the quality of the help you receive depends on the knowledge of the area, plus the experience level of the team assigned to your business.
In truth, there are many different benefits that marketing firms of different sizes provides. As Liz O'Neill points out on the Precision Marketing Group blog, the help any small business marketing firm provides needs to match the scale you require.
If you need help with marketing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
If you're thinking about finding help in Jackson Heights for your small business, here are the things to keep in mind.
See more about Small Business Marketing in Jackson Heights. If you are more interest in the borough, you can see our Small Business Marketing in Queens. If you want the full city, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NYC.