Fred's Five Marketing Must Do's For Summer Revenue Increases

As Alice Cooper once said: "School's out for the summer, school's out forever!  And when school is out for the summer, the bowling business changes.

So here's a couple of  "Fred's Marketing Must Do's" to get your summer going in a good direction.

1.  Have you joined the Kids Bowl Free Movement?  Last year over 1.2 million Moms registered their kids for this program in almost 1,000 centers across the United States and Canada. And this year, even more centers are joining the program.  Don't miss this opportunity to generate traffic, additional paid games, increased shoe rental and food and beverage income as well as getting a database to which you can re-market all year.  Visit http://www.kidsbowlfree.com/ and call 866.798.4502 to register your center.

2. Don't automatically drop your price to 99 cents like so many centers do. Its OK to do this in certain time slots, but for other slots, stay at $1.99 or higher and offer a Free 2 liter bottle of Pepsi for anyone who gets a "blue pin" head pin strike.  About one out of 10 games will result in this, so your actual cost will be about .13 cents a game (thirteen cents).  Give out theatre style tickets to the people that win and WHEN THEY LEAVE the building they redeem the tickets.  Your employee will then tear the tickets in half and put one half of the ticket into a box.  At the end of the shift, your tickets in the box should match your beginning inventory MINUS the number of tickets in the box.  If not, go fire someone!  get Pepsi to make you a banner; hang empty Pepsi cartons from the ceiling; build a display on the sidewalls, email, Facebook and twitter this information to all open play customers. Mt of Pepsi is NOT valid for league games, or FREE games.

3.Don't become invisible.  Because, as an industry, we do so little media advertising in general, its easy for consumers to forget about us.  Don't be invisible.  Buy two weeks of adverting flights in May,June, July and August on cable TV and promote your cosmic bowl or Pizza Pins N Pop or Mt of Pepsi.  Buy Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 4pm to midnight. ask for freebies after midnight.  Budget $1,000 per month.  That should buy you almost 50 spots a flight.  DO NOT BUY ROTATOR SPOTS, regardless of what the media person tells you. Yes, rotator spots will be cheaper, but do you really want an commercial  at 7am to promote cosmic bowling.  Buy the spots from BPAA and do your own voice overs. 4 spots cost about $80 bucks Have the media people do the voice over.

4.E-Mail special offers for Cosmic bowling on a Thursday valid for Friday and Saturday only and only this Friday and Saturday! (Example:  bring 4 people to comic bowling and get a free pizza; bring 4 people to cosmic bowling and the 4th person is free. You get the idea.  Do this every other week or so and measure your results.

5.  Christmas in July.  Invite all the people you had company parties with this past Christmas season and offer them 50% off a summer party if they reserve a Holiday party in December...and get a deposit.

Try these "Fred's Five marketing Must Do's" for improving your summer revenue. You won't be disappointed.

And if you have any questions, please call me 516 359 4874. Like this blog?  Like it on Facebook. Go to kaploe marketing group on Facebook and hit "like" or comment.  Thank You very much.