CHICAGO — Dry cleaners use a variety of new-media tools—including Facebook, Twitter and e-mail—to market their businesses, according to results from this month’s American Drycleaner Your Views survey, and it seems many of them do so for multiple reasons.
Among those who use new-media tools, 15.7% utilize them to “attract new customers,” 13.5% to “educate customers about the business,” 9.0% to “increase customer loyalty,” and 6.7% to “publicize sales and promotions.”
More than half of respondents (55.1%) utilize new-media tools for all of those reasons.
Despite their new-media marketing efforts, the majority of dry cleaners report that such tactics work only “sometimes” (58.6%). While 22.2% believe new-media tools “satisfy [their] marketing goals,” 19.2% of respondents say new-media tools do not help them in marketing their business.
When asked what type of new-media tools they use, the most frequently mentioned among those who took the poll was a company website (26.8%). E-mail (17.9%), Facebook (13.4%), text messaging (3.6%) and Twitter (0.9%) are also in use.
While 22.3% of respondents say they use none of the new-media tools that were listed, 15.2% utilize some combination of all popular choices, as well as other new-media marketing tools, such as deal-of-the-day discounter Groupon and “free Wi-Fi service with order discounts.”
Other respondents, however, stick to traditional marketing tools such as direct mail, billboards and TV and radio ads.
While American Drycleaner’s Your Views survey presents a snapshot of the trade audience’s viewpoints at a particular moment, it should not be considered scientific. Subscribers to American Drycleaner e-mails are invited each month to participate in a brief industry survey they can complete anonymously.
The entire American Drycleaner audience is encouraged to participate, as a greater number of responses will help to better define owner/operator opinions and industry trends.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].