I find it interesting that, in this world of shopping malls and big box stores, there are still times when people automatically think of a specialty store for a specific need. Local retail jewelers are specialty stores because they focus on a single product category, but at the rate that JBT reports jewelers going out of business, it seems like the small local retail jewelers are going the way of the haberdashery.
Specialty Stores and Specialty Services
Trophy shops are another specialty store category that can compete with retail jewelers, and I know of a few within a few miles of my office in New Jersey. In case you haven't guessed it yet, jewelers and trophy shops have competing engraving services.
The trophy shop specializes in engraving and it makes sense for them to own the latest computerized engraving equipment that could probably carve initials into anything of any size. Most of the retail jewelers I know haven't invested into new technology and are still doing all their engraving with a New Hermes Engravograph or something similar. It's no wonder that most jewelers also don't advertise their engraving service because it takes too much time to do it by hand with one of those Engravographs.
Being the technology nerd that I am, if I want something engraved, I'd go to the nearest jeweler that has one of those computerized engravers. The hand engravers do provide charming results, but I've been in the presence of jewelry store employees who made a mistake while using an Engraveograph; the kind of mistake that ruins the item being engraved.
Last Saturday morning, one of my friends asked me if I knew of any local jewelers that did engraving. He had a pendant that he'd been saving for a very long time and he wanted to get it engraved. It was a pendant with sentimental value that would be impossible to replace.
I found his request for help intriguing; not because he asked me to help him find a jeweler, but because he thought of a jeweler first before one of the local trophy shops. None of my local jewelers advertise engraving services, but all the trophy shops do. He simply came to the conclusion that if he had a pendant that needed engraving, naturally you would go to a jeweler.
In case you're wondering, there are a number of trophy shops in my area of northern New Jersey, and I'm sure they have plenty of business from all those school, junior sports, and children organizations that now give out awards too all the winners and losers.
What Did You Search For?
I asked the question that all of you retail jewelers should be asking at the point of purchase in your own store: "What did you search for?" He told me "engraving," but then he had to refine his search to "engraving haledon nj." Here's what the results look like for that search:
(click to enlarge)
What's interesting about this search result is that Pascale Jewelers in North Haledon, NJ appeared as the only local business on the page. The majority of the results you see here were directory websites like Yellow Pages and Yelp. The 6 green arrows in the above screen grab point to those directories.
The blue arrow points to a random blog listing. Someone wrote a blog post about engraving and how they helped a customer in Haledon, New Jersey and that blog appeared in this search. I assume that's exactly what they wanted for that blog post, and this is why you write blogs like this in the first place.
The purple arrow in the above image points to one of the local trophy shops; it also happens to be the only local business with a website.
Pascale doesn't have a website and the only reason it appears in this search result at all is because they chose "Jewelry Engraver" as their business category. The red arrow in the above image points to their business category.
Online Business Listings
Years ago, Google purchased business listings from reputable sources like government census data, and imported that into their Google Local system. Supposedly, they don't do this anymore, but it still seems like they got the Pascal Jewelers information from somewhere.
There's a lot of missing information in the Pascale listing, leading me to believe that this business entry was imported rather than typed in by a Pascale employee.
I found another potential hint that tells me the Pascale information was imported when I looked at their Yellow Pages listing shown here:
That listing also says "Jewelry Engravers, Engraving" and the website link goes to a different company in the UK. Only machine generated content and malicious people would get things this wrong.
The YellowBot website also has erroneous tags associated with Pascale Jewelers as shown here:
The tags "business services," "clothing," "clothing accessories wholesale," and "trophies & engraving" all jump out at me as incorrect tags. These also seem machine generated.
Today's Point
As it turned out, my friend did go to Pascale Jewelers to get his pendant engraved; here's a photo of it:
They did use one of those older Engraveographs. Pascale Jewelers probably wouldn't have been his choice if their Google local listing was not tagged as a "Jewelry Engraver." This worked out in their favor this time around, but engraving is not a commonly sought after service. It would be better for them to be listed as a normal jeweler.
Too many jewelers are going about their normal daily routine where they are no better than hamsters stuck on a wheel and they don't check their online business listings. Given the chance, Pascale Jewelers would probably like to fix their listings. Even though they don't have a website right now this small fix to their Google Local listing could improve their foot traffic. While they're at it they should also fix their business listings in Yelp, Yellow Pages, and YellowBot too.
When was the last time you looked at your business listing in Google Local? Check it right now; you never know what might have been changed without your permission. Automatic machine changes could mess up your listing and malicious people do like to change things, even marking your business as closed.
That it for this week; I'll see you next time...
FTC Notice: I randomly choose this website and won't be telling the retailer jeweler that I'm giving them these flop fix ideas. Unless someone else tells them, they will only find out about this Nugget if they use Google Alerts or examine their Google Analytics and Google Search Console. I'm not doing this to solicit business from them, but rather as an educational exercise for everyone. This #FridayFlopFix is completely impartial and all my comments are based on previous experience in my website design and marketing agency, and from my personal research data.
