(By Jackson Dell Weaver) It doesn’t matter where. Maryland, Georgia, California or Utah. Excepting some time forgotten dusty corner communities, the vibrant idealized image of retail on Main Street is gone.
The local retail many of us grew up with – the soda fountain at Woolworths, the furniture store. Phil Fabiano’s Music store and particulary the car dealers are just no longer there on the main drags of any of our communities. Most main street retail is now service or entertainment/dining oriented. Coffee shop, nail salon, Mexican restaurant, dive bar, etc. You know the layout.
And as lovely as all of these retail spots are – the cost of maintaining these small and large towns alike rely on sales tax for the most part. And for the last decade a large portion the sales tax revenue for these communities has been provided by automotive and real estate taxes.
However, now most of the car dealers have moved to the outer edge of town or in some cases have taken over entire swaths of city blocks to sell what amounted to almost 17 million cars a year. But that was last year. Data we’ve seen projects a sales rate of 6 million cars a year for the rest of 2020.
The impact on local government budgets will be enormous. And as Keith Samuels, noted sales consultant, discussed in our last No Fear Café this will be a very compelling reason to get auto sales back on track as quickly as possible.
Samuels pointed out that we’ve been a bit frozen with the shock of what has happened to our businesses with Covid19. Like a scene out of Homeland, when the bomb goes off, everyone loses hearing and orientation. Media people and our clients alike. But the smoke is clearing along with our heads. Keith’s point was let’s not miss the changing attitude as we go back into business later this year.
We need to identify the categories that will need to refill the top of their funnels. In Southern California , as Samuels pointed out, “…. that means the entertainment business. Imagine losing the revenue from 60,000 plus attendees every day at Disneyland or Universal Studios. “
In most of our markets those categories however will be automotive, consumer retail/services, telecom, real estate and slowly, events, restaurants and casinos. Travel advertising will lag all of these categories. We need to be educating our clients that they will need to prime the pump for new business when the time comes.
This is an alien concept for a lot of our clients. “Everyone knows where we are. We’ve got plenty of business.” All phrases we’ve heard, right? No longer. Their pipeline is empty. For the most part our clients have been out of business and need to refill their pipeline with customers. Reluctant customers at that. Imagine of a whole market full of grand re-openings!
Samuels also recommended visiting the National Association of Automobile Dealers website to see how they are prepping dealers to get through relaunching post Covid19. It will be very helpful in understanding what the dealers are hearing from their trade organization.
The takeaway? Get in front of the business resurgence in our markets – whenever it happens- the dollars will go to the sales teams who have walked along side and been present during this remarkable crisis. And that should be you and should be radio.
Join us in the No Fear Café where we are creating ideas and connection with each other in our video Zoom calls. 9AM (PT) each Tuesday. Registration is required to prevent Zoombombing. Register at www.intownmedia.com
