First the store, then the promotion.

I can see that I need to explain myself better on my assertion that "promotions" cannot save your business over the long run.

If you don't mind, I'm going to use the 80/20 rule for illustrative purposes.

I will make a bold statement -- that 80% of the customers who walk in your door have not been affected by your promotional efforts. Seriously. They've never heard your ad, they don't care that you had an author signing last week, they missed that newspaper article on you.

No, they are there because they are regulars, semi-regulars, browsers, tourists, whatever.

They look around your store and if you have something they want at a decent price they buy. Or not.

I'll take that even further. Of the 20% of the customers who walk in your door who HAVE been affected by your promotional efforts, 80% of them won't buy anything because of those efforts.

So what is that? 20% of 20% is about 4% of your sales.

Not insignificant, I suppose. You have to weigh the time, energy, money, space, and all the other elements that go into a promotion to decide if it's worth pursuing. If so, then go ahead by all means. As long as you know the payoff.

O.K. The 20/80 rule is convenient. So say you go crazy with promotions, and a full 30% of your customers are affected by your promotional efforts, and a full 30% of them will buy something. So 30% of 30% brings it up to 9% of your sales. Again, you've been promoting like crazy ("6000 author signings!) so you have to weigh the costs versus the results.

In my case, I'd say that less than 10% have ever heard any promotional efforts on my part, and almost none of them will buy just because they read a story in the Bulletin or read my blog or whatever.

This is NOT the impression you get reading stories about retail. You'd think that promotional efforts are the most important part of being in business. Image is everything, according to this way of thinking.

But I think it's putting the cart before the horse. It's the equivalent of the Dress for Success. Or driving a fancy car to prove to your clients how successful you are.

I think true successes get there by being efficient and hardworking and honest and experienced and -- on and on.

Otherwise, you're just an empty suit. A nice empty suit, in a nice, debt-ridden car.

It seems to me that most of the stories about business I read are about "image". Almost all the business blogs I see are about "image": how to market yourself online, or with advertising and all that.

And I'm saying it just way too overblown. To the effect that it attracts people who buy that entire message and they are simply unprepared to run a real business. They want to have a successful image without putting in the fundamentals to make it a successful business. And they think they get there by promoting, burnishing their image, joining the clubs, dressing nice --whatever.

Again, most of my customers have never read my blog, or seen an article in paper. I've spent thousands of dollars on advertising before, and had a 1% hit rate when I ask people in the door. I've had months, even years, of a fad driven clientele -- way beyond my normal numbers of customers -- who then disappeared when the fad was over.

So promote your store by all means. Just don't mistake that for success.