Leaving JFK yesterday i watched the anxiety on the faces of most travelers. Would they get through security on time for their flights? Would their bags get to the destination on time and would they have a safe flight? It was just another consumer buying decision. Every buying decision involves a risk. Every transaction is based on some particle of faith that says "if you buy this product or service, it will meet your expectations". Sometimes the product achieves that goal and sometimes it doesn't. That's because consumers really only want two things: to increase their pleasure or to reduce their pain. You can talk about wants, needs, convenience, problem solving, etc. all you want, but its all about increasing pleasure and reducing pain. And the engine that drives these two needs is HOPE. Hope is that invisible space when the money changes hands and the product or service is delivered. Hope is what consumers have when they come into your entertainment facility. Will they get increased pleasure for their money or find someway to reduce the pain of boredom and tedium?
For your customers, Hope is what they cling to. For your business HOPE is NOT a strategy.
So what is the strategy for your business? Do you just want to make it through another season; fill one more hole; get more traffic or are you really looking at the business from a 3 to 5 year standpoint? Or are you just hoping that something good will happen?
Achieving short term growth at the expense of longer term plans is like selling your first born to protect the other children. No parent would ever do that so why are we so anxious about long range business planning?
Start with one question: "Where do I want to be in 5 years and what do I want my business to look like?" write 'em down, send it to me. It will be interesting.
Read the book "Hope is Not A Strategy" By Rick Page. Learn about complex sales. Learn about strategy. Learn...continuously.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Disconnected
I misplaced my cell phone yesterday; left it in a friend's car as I ran for a plane at the airport. Fortunately my friend was able to send it back via Fed Ex and I will have it tomorrow.
What a terrible feeling. I spoke with quite a few people today and they all said the same thing; "isn't it horrible?". Yes it is, but it got me to thinking.
How would we market our business if we could not connect electronically with our market? How would we try to connect? Would we just rely on traditional forms of media or would we try to invent a new way to connect that isn't yet available? Or maybe invent a non electronic form of Twitter or Face Book.
When we were kids, we might have had a "pen pal?" That was a precursor of Face book. We sent information to people and they wrote back to us. We exchanged pictures and talked about our lives. If we were hip, we could have used it as a sales opportunity. In fact we eventually did. It was called direct response marketing.
Perhaps, being in the retail business, we could go back to our 5 mile rings of influence or 10 mile rings of influence to reach our market, either via direct mail, telemarketing, sales appointments and local or regional advertising. Shouldn't we still do that? Recent reports have stated that marketing results increase exponentially, just by adding postcards, permission based faxes and robo calls to our E marketing efforts.
While conventional wisdom states that E marketing must be a cornerstone of your total marketing effort, it doesn't say that it should be the ONLY part.
What a terrible feeling. I spoke with quite a few people today and they all said the same thing; "isn't it horrible?". Yes it is, but it got me to thinking.
How would we market our business if we could not connect electronically with our market? How would we try to connect? Would we just rely on traditional forms of media or would we try to invent a new way to connect that isn't yet available? Or maybe invent a non electronic form of Twitter or Face Book.
When we were kids, we might have had a "pen pal?" That was a precursor of Face book. We sent information to people and they wrote back to us. We exchanged pictures and talked about our lives. If we were hip, we could have used it as a sales opportunity. In fact we eventually did. It was called direct response marketing.
Perhaps, being in the retail business, we could go back to our 5 mile rings of influence or 10 mile rings of influence to reach our market, either via direct mail, telemarketing, sales appointments and local or regional advertising. Shouldn't we still do that? Recent reports have stated that marketing results increase exponentially, just by adding postcards, permission based faxes and robo calls to our E marketing efforts.
While conventional wisdom states that E marketing must be a cornerstone of your total marketing effort, it doesn't say that it should be the ONLY part.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Grins, Smiles and Laughs
As an observer of human behavior, I sometimes like to see if I can pick up patterns of behavior among people sharing a common experience; like flying on an airplane. So far I have been able to isolate various segments of fliers. There are the readers, the writers, the sleepers and the lookers. At any given time any one of these people can shift into another group; sometimes they are in two groups (segments) at the same time. And if I studied these groups long enough, I would probably find out what motivated them to be in their respective group to start with.
Now what if you could observe people having fun at your entertainment center, based upon "product usage", and then segment them by how they are experiencing fun? What would you find? Would you find "laughers, grinners and smilers"? Would you find h that each group interpreted and responded to fun differently? Would you find that there was a way to motivate each of these groups to come back more frequently? I think so.
Susan Dunn, Publisher of Self Growth, an on line self improvement magazine (www.selfgrowth.com)has recently come up with an interesting treatise on "having fun".
While she asks people what their definition of fun is, the answers she gets are surprisingly stated in the negative.
"not thinking or feeling"
"being alone"
"anywhere without decisions or arguments"
"something that doesn't end me up with a policeman, a lawyer, a doctor or a therapist."
See what I mean. Fun is expressed as "the absence of a bad thing". Shouldn't fun be expressed in terms of smiles or laughs? What if there was a happiness meter, a "laughometer" or a "smilometer"? We could then gauge how happy people were at our centers or how effective our programs were on delivering fun.
Or we could just go out there every day and try to make just 3 customers a day smile. What do you think that would do to our revenue growth?
Now what if you could observe people having fun at your entertainment center, based upon "product usage", and then segment them by how they are experiencing fun? What would you find? Would you find "laughers, grinners and smilers"? Would you find h that each group interpreted and responded to fun differently? Would you find that there was a way to motivate each of these groups to come back more frequently? I think so.
Susan Dunn, Publisher of Self Growth, an on line self improvement magazine (www.selfgrowth.com)has recently come up with an interesting treatise on "having fun".
While she asks people what their definition of fun is, the answers she gets are surprisingly stated in the negative.
"not thinking or feeling"
"being alone"
"anywhere without decisions or arguments"
"something that doesn't end me up with a policeman, a lawyer, a doctor or a therapist."
See what I mean. Fun is expressed as "the absence of a bad thing". Shouldn't fun be expressed in terms of smiles or laughs? What if there was a happiness meter, a "laughometer" or a "smilometer"? We could then gauge how happy people were at our centers or how effective our programs were on delivering fun.
Or we could just go out there every day and try to make just 3 customers a day smile. What do you think that would do to our revenue growth?
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Free Ticket
As much as we talk about the three purposes of marketing, (getting new customers, getting them to come back and getting them to spend more money each time they come back) it is always surprising to see new bowling centers spend inordinate amounts of time and money on planning soft openings, grand openings and public openings to insure that the facility kicks off in high fashion. Centers that have spent a great deal of money modernizing their facilities will, unfortunately, believe that they too must undertake similar activities and implement an expensive "re grand opening." Yet these new centers, and existing centers, will spend much less time on the one factor that makes all the difference; remarkable customer service.
The first visits to the new center, or to the modernized center, is usually a free ticket. New customers will come in because of their curiosity and because of the publicity the local media, who has been covering the progress of the center, has given the facility.
It is the second visit that is the real test.
What message or what impression has been made upon the new customer after his first visit? Is it a “wow, what an experience?” Is it “nice place, good time, but a bit pricey?” Or have they said “nice place, real modern, but the service was pretty bad. I’ll go back IF they straighten it out."
Moral of the story: If you concentrate on training everyone in the facility on HOW to “make happy memories” and if you consistently do that from day one, then the second visit can be a free ticket too.
What did you or your staff do to make a happy memory for just one of your customers today?
The first visits to the new center, or to the modernized center, is usually a free ticket. New customers will come in because of their curiosity and because of the publicity the local media, who has been covering the progress of the center, has given the facility.
It is the second visit that is the real test.
What message or what impression has been made upon the new customer after his first visit? Is it a “wow, what an experience?” Is it “nice place, good time, but a bit pricey?” Or have they said “nice place, real modern, but the service was pretty bad. I’ll go back IF they straighten it out."
Moral of the story: If you concentrate on training everyone in the facility on HOW to “make happy memories” and if you consistently do that from day one, then the second visit can be a free ticket too.
What did you or your staff do to make a happy memory for just one of your customers today?
Saturday, July 11, 2009
When Is Free Not So Free?
"People are making a lot of money charging nothing" writes Chris Anderson, Editor In Chief of WIRED and Author of "The Future of a Radical Price". "In an increasingly competitive marketplace, much intellectual property is often distributed free and suppliers of internet content have exploded in number", continues Anderson.
Now, if you see a lot of FREE offers on the Internet, it is because the cost of one more customer or the cost of one more pair of eyeballs is next to nothing.
If it costs next to nothing, should not marketers have something else to sell? In what Anderson describes as "freemiums", a strategy that offers a new product for sale when the first product is distributed freely, the products that are sold help to subsidize those products that are given away. But what if, instead of FREE, we gave the customer rewards for buying our product. Those rewards are then only used to buy more of our products. At what point do we take the wonder of FREE to the next level?
At what point do we create a new product for our existing customer and ask him to pay for it? At what point do we start to make money?
Now, if you see a lot of FREE offers on the Internet, it is because the cost of one more customer or the cost of one more pair of eyeballs is next to nothing.
If it costs next to nothing, should not marketers have something else to sell? In what Anderson describes as "freemiums", a strategy that offers a new product for sale when the first product is distributed freely, the products that are sold help to subsidize those products that are given away. But what if, instead of FREE, we gave the customer rewards for buying our product. Those rewards are then only used to buy more of our products. At what point do we take the wonder of FREE to the next level?
At what point do we create a new product for our existing customer and ask him to pay for it? At what point do we start to make money?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Good Marketing and ROI
If marketing is the battle for perception, then good marketing creates a perception that motivates people to buy a product or service. It is the perception (your personal vision of reality) therefore, that prompts action. Your perception can also create a warm and fuzzy feeling about the product, or company, that can also stimulate a purchase.
Your perception isn't formed by one advertisement or one flight of cable spots or a billboard or even the ad that you saw this month (or was it last month?) Your perceptions are cumulative. Your thoughts about a product are amassed over time and include word of mouth, first hand experience and what you believe is true about the product
So how can you measure the ROI of a recent campaign? The answer is - consumers really don't know why they buy a product at a particular time. No doubt it is a combination of all of the marketing elements. That is why all marketers preach multiple medias and multiple frequencies. Marketing effect happens over time.
Because of the difficulty in measuring ROI, some companies will be so conservative that they will virtually cease many of their marketing efforts. This is great news for those that keep marketing. In time those companies that consistently market the differentiation of their products and services will win.
Sometimes measuring marketing ROI is like watching a clock. It moves, but you just can't see it.
Your perception isn't formed by one advertisement or one flight of cable spots or a billboard or even the ad that you saw this month (or was it last month?) Your perceptions are cumulative. Your thoughts about a product are amassed over time and include word of mouth, first hand experience and what you believe is true about the product
So how can you measure the ROI of a recent campaign? The answer is - consumers really don't know why they buy a product at a particular time. No doubt it is a combination of all of the marketing elements. That is why all marketers preach multiple medias and multiple frequencies. Marketing effect happens over time.
Because of the difficulty in measuring ROI, some companies will be so conservative that they will virtually cease many of their marketing efforts. This is great news for those that keep marketing. In time those companies that consistently market the differentiation of their products and services will win.
Sometimes measuring marketing ROI is like watching a clock. It moves, but you just can't see it.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
5 pillars of success
The five pillars of success1. See (really see) what's possible.
2. Know specifically what you want to achieve.
3. Make good decisions.
4. Understand the tactics to get things done and to change minds.
5. Earn the trust and respect of the people around you.
It sure seems like we spend all our time on #4.
What We Think We Know
If you saw your best friend sitting in a police car, what would you assume was the crime he committed?
The judgment we make about this situation, we reason, is based upon our life experiences, what we know about our friend, what we have always thought about our friend (but never told him), what we perceive the circumstances to be and our basic "gut" feel. Our answer is now firmly planted and we take a stand on the new "truth".
Sometimes we act the same way in our business. We see events in our business and rush to judgment based upon what we think we know. We base our judgments on our experience, our knowledge of the business and what we have seen with our own eyes. Right?
Maybe not.
How close are we to young adults; to the key teenagers that populate our center? How much do we know about their tastes? Or for that matter, their motivations. The BPAA produced a good study a year or two ago about various groups of bowlers and what motivates the "social" bowler to bowl. While you need to get a copy of that study, its even more important that you do some research on your own.
Thinking of some new league concepts? Get a bunch of them into flier form and show them to open play bowlers. Oh, they'll criticize the art and the type, everyone is an expert, but get them to focus on the CONCEPT. Now if you speak to enough open play bowlers you will find that there are probably a dozen or so that are interested in one or more new concepts. Not only have you gotten feed back from which to base your decisions, but you have also created a few interested people who just might be willing to bring a few more friends and start a short season league.
If we don't ask what people like we will always assume we know what they want. And like our friend in the police car, who was just asking for directions, we might be wrong.
The judgment we make about this situation, we reason, is based upon our life experiences, what we know about our friend, what we have always thought about our friend (but never told him), what we perceive the circumstances to be and our basic "gut" feel. Our answer is now firmly planted and we take a stand on the new "truth".
Sometimes we act the same way in our business. We see events in our business and rush to judgment based upon what we think we know. We base our judgments on our experience, our knowledge of the business and what we have seen with our own eyes. Right?
Maybe not.
How close are we to young adults; to the key teenagers that populate our center? How much do we know about their tastes? Or for that matter, their motivations. The BPAA produced a good study a year or two ago about various groups of bowlers and what motivates the "social" bowler to bowl. While you need to get a copy of that study, its even more important that you do some research on your own.
Thinking of some new league concepts? Get a bunch of them into flier form and show them to open play bowlers. Oh, they'll criticize the art and the type, everyone is an expert, but get them to focus on the CONCEPT. Now if you speak to enough open play bowlers you will find that there are probably a dozen or so that are interested in one or more new concepts. Not only have you gotten feed back from which to base your decisions, but you have also created a few interested people who just might be willing to bring a few more friends and start a short season league.
If we don't ask what people like we will always assume we know what they want. And like our friend in the police car, who was just asking for directions, we might be wrong.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
July 4th...Are you closed?
Baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. Signs of a less complicated time. In many towns and cities across the country, fireworks will go off, parades will take place and many a hot dog and hamburger will be eaten. Children will squeal with joy and parents will laugh, drink beer or other beverages and will share a typically American holiday.
Where is bowling on this day?
Many centers will be on "reduced hour" schedules. Others will stay open and run specials. Still others will just close. And that's sad because not only is The 4th of July an opportunity for your business to build community involvement and reinforce your product offerings, but it is just one holiday of many where your presence can make a difference. And it's not just holidays that are important. Its all those street fairs, concerts, music events and markets that your target audience (15 to 34) attends with great frequency.
Be remarkable and reach your key audience in places THEY GO.
Where is bowling on this day?
Many centers will be on "reduced hour" schedules. Others will stay open and run specials. Still others will just close. And that's sad because not only is The 4th of July an opportunity for your business to build community involvement and reinforce your product offerings, but it is just one holiday of many where your presence can make a difference. And it's not just holidays that are important. Its all those street fairs, concerts, music events and markets that your target audience (15 to 34) attends with great frequency.
Be remarkable and reach your key audience in places THEY GO.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The joy of trying
Every now and then I watch and listen in awe as people tell me they will "try" to get their tasks done; they will "try" to meet the deadline; or they will "try" to be at my party or meet me for dinner? What is this "try"? Have you ever tried to call someone? Heck NO! You either call or you don't. There is no such thing as try. What if the pilot said, on the last flight you were on, "well folks, we are about 100 miles from O'Hare and I sure will "TRY" to land this 757 on the runway. Rest assured, I will do my best and try to make it".
How good would you feel then?
It's the same with employees. If you accept the fact that they tried as a valid reason for not getting stuff done, then you have just subscribed to the "Try Club". And from now on, your employees will know that if they can convince you they tried, they will be off the hook.
Well, Coach, it's your job to show them that "scoring, getting in the goal" is what it is all about.
Otherwise, you and your business are just running up and down the field.
How good would you feel then?
It's the same with employees. If you accept the fact that they tried as a valid reason for not getting stuff done, then you have just subscribed to the "Try Club". And from now on, your employees will know that if they can convince you they tried, they will be off the hook.
Well, Coach, it's your job to show them that "scoring, getting in the goal" is what it is all about.
Otherwise, you and your business are just running up and down the field.
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