Words: Roger Cooper

As one of the business judges for the annual kbbreview Retail & Design Awards I look very carefully at the marketing programmes that showrooms present as part of their submission.

As a skeptic of the value of social media I look very for a well-rounded plan of local marketing activity embracing advertising, social functions, post/mail communications and support to groups such as child sporting activities. I do not believe that social media alone, however brilliantly executed is enough to establish a strong presence.

In the tough market conditions that exist now, all showrooms need to be looking at what they can do to find business – there are potential customers that you can serve by expanding the geographic area and by increasing the level of awareness by a more direct approach.

To do this, the showroom needs to go out and find the customer rather than wait for the customer to find you. How can the AI revolution help with this?

Many years ago (over 35 years to be precise!) I was in charge of one of the leading suppliers to the bathroom industry and I needed information that was not always readily available.

We were looking to improve the efficiency and coverage of the external sales team starting with a review of territory size and shape which had previously been planned on the reasonable mile coverage of each member of the team.

I looked at the map and it was clear that this was simply not correct – what we need to know was where our market opportunity was. The hills and valleys of Wales and Scotland, for example, do not need to be covered but we needed coverage where the houses are. In fact, not just houses, but owner occupied houses and preferably the middle and upper market houses.

Our sales team needed to be in the areas which offered the best opportunities. In 1990, this kind of information was simply not readily available to us, but we found a company called CACI to provide the data.

After reviewing the Award submissions this year, I thought back to that how useful that data was and wondered how much CACI would have moved forward. I was stunned to see the detail they can provide right down to street level… not just which houses are owner-occupied, but also how old they are, their approximate market value, and even estimates of household income.

As a showroom you may think you know all this about your local area – but the level of information is so much more detailed, allowing better targeting.

I recently read in the Sunday Times that Ordinance Survey are now in the market of providing exactly this kind of information and have developed tools to use AI so that your business can access this data about every street in the country and have even created “a map you can chat with”.

I would urge every showroom owner to read this article (It was in the business section on 24 May) and find ways to bring data relevant to your business into your thinking and activity. Once you know where the opportunities are, then you can plan an appropriate direct approach.

As a final comment, I am aware that one major retail bathroom company already uses one of these sources to determine where to open their new showrooms. If they use this for showroom location planning then it is logical to think they will use it for local selling campaigns too!