Facebook Changes The Rules..And We Win!

MY good friend, Sheryl Bindelglass, www.Sheryl@Sherylgolf.com sent me this and I wanted to share it with all of you immediately.

BIG NEWS 

 Third-Party Apps No longer required to create Facebook promotions. Sharing this great news with clients, and friends  

 *NEWSFLASH* 

Facebook just updated its Page Terms! You can now run CONTESTS on your Page without a third party app!! This is huge news! Wow. Thousands of companies were already running contests on their Pages that didn't comply with the 3rd party rule. Now, they will be compliant!

You can now run promotions (contests, sweepstakes, competitions or drawings) on your PAGE wall and/or via a third party app on Facebook. Pages can:
* collect entries via users (fans and non-fans) posting on the Page wall
* collect entries by users commenting or liking on a Page post...

* collect votes via likes (new fans, post likes)

This is all great news for increasing ENGAGEMENT! Plus, with the message feature, companies can open up more dialogs with prospects via the Message feature.

There is just one small rule Pages need to comply with now and it’s around accurate tagging. Pages cannot:
*ask users to tag themselves in any images in order to enter contests. (Facebook wants us to use photo tags for when we’re actually in the photo/image. Makes sense.)

See the official announcement here: https://www.facebook.com/facebookforbusiness/news/page-promotions-terms

From a Facebook spokesperson via AllFacebook.com:
"This capability makes it even easier for smaller businesses to help build awareness for a new product, promote the opening of a new location, sell inventory, or advance other business objectives. Say, for instance, a local pizza parlor wants to give away free pizza for a month to the 100th person to like its post. Now the business can do this right on its page (and increase awareness of the post via promoted posts) without needing to work with a third-party to build an app."
http://allfacebook.com/updated-promotions-guidelines_b124179

Third-Party Apps No Longer Required To Create Facebook Promotions

David Cohen on August 27, 2013 6:37 PM

Facebook Tuesday announced updated guidelines for promotions on the social network, and the most prominent change was the removal of the requirement that promotions be administered via applications only.

The changes were detailed in a blog post on the Facebook for Business page:

We’ve removed the requirement that promotions on Facebook only be administered through apps. Now, promotions may be administered on page Timelines and in apps on Facebook. For example, businesses can now:

·         Collect entries by having users post on the page or comment/like a page post.

·         Collect entries by having users message the page.

·         Utilize likes as a voting mechanism.

As before, however, businesses cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines.

Accurate tagging is required in promotions.

In order to maintain the accuracy of page content, our pages terms now prohibit pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. So, for instance:

·         It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize.

·         It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize.

A Facebook spokesperson said in an email to AllFacebook:

This capability makes it even easier for smaller businesses to help build awareness for a new product, promote the opening of a new location, sell inventory, or advance other business objectives. Say, for instance, a local pizza parlor wants to give away free pizza for a month to the 100th person to like its post. Now the business can do this right on its page (and increase awareness of the post via promoted posts) without needing to work with a third-party to build an app.

ShortStack CEO Jim Belosic weighed in on the impact of Facebook’s announcement in an email to AllFacebook:

"Today’s change will be helpful for small business owners, making it easier for them to host promotions. Is this the end of apps? No, because when you have a large following, getting Facebook likes and comments is only the first step. Savvy marketers know that the real work is done when  you collect and leverage data for ongoing promotions and marketing efforts, and apps make that possible."

Hope this information will help you run fantastic promotions on facebook.

Wishing you Great Sales & Lots of FUN!

A Different POV on Quality

Very often we talk about a quality bowling experience. we talk about high touch points, high tech points and “always going the extra mile” to make sure customers leave our bowling center with happy memories

Every now and then I like to stop and see if we are truly delivering a happy memory so I ask our staff:

“What kind of quality does the customer  want?"  I usually get answers like:

1.   “They perceive us as a good value for the money.”

2.  “They had a good time and their time was well spent; they have no regrets.”

3.  “They forgot about their troubles for a while.”

4.  “The center was neat and clean and everybody smiled and if they had a problem, someone was there to take care of it.”

5.  “We didn't say NO all day to any customer.”

6.  “When people finished bowling, and as they were leaving I said, "Thanks for coming; come back and see us soon”, they said ‘We sure will”... and I think they meant it.

7.  “One lady commented on how clean our bathrooms smelled and another man  told me that his son really enjoys his summer league program and will probably bowl in the fall.”

Gee I thought, these are real great comments, but what if we got it wrong?  Maybe quality was just a clean bowling center, cheap prices, OK food and the fact that nobody at the center hassled them or gave them a hard time.  What if that’s what they wanted and we weren't delivering that?

Has anyone ever asked how the customer defines “a quality bowling experience?”  if you have would you share those answers with us…’cause, who knows, we may have been interpreting  it wrong…and all we have to go on is what WE think, not what the customers think.”

“Aw Fred, that’ just common sense. You have gone overboard on this one.  Really, read the next paragraph...

Reminded me of a story about Kodak, who recently filed bankruptcy, (followed by Polaroid). Their idea of customer quality was to “deliver the highest most professional quality images to the average consumer.”  That is, give the typical shutter-bug consumer the same quality picture that a professional photographer wants.       

                                  

But Kodak, and subsequently Polaroid, got it wrong.

What the customer wanted was cheap film, easy to use and eventually pictures that could be shared with anybody they wanted to and NOT museum quality prints.

And as one marketing executive (Seth Godin) said in a recent article I read: “Quality is not an absolute measure. It doesn't mean 'deluxeness' or 'perfection'. It means keeping the promise the customer wants you to make.

A Word or Two about Technology

I am sitting in the Philadelphia airport American Airlines lounge waiting for my connection and reading "USA Today" on the Internet. As I lift my eyes from my computer, I gaze at my fellow travelers and notice, not unexpectedly, that all of them, (and I mean ALL) including me, are plugged into their computers or tablets or smart phones. 

In this information obsessed society, I watch an older well dressed gentleman, as he walks over to get some coffee, opens his “vintage” Motorola flip phone and begins to talk into it. I also watch people look at him as if he just crawled out from under a rock.  

If you haven't seen how fast technology is moving check out the recent battles between the Apple I Phone 5  (soon to be the 5S and the Samsung Galaxy III...or IV  It is almost hard to believe what these phones can do.  It’s Big Brother in the palm of your hand…whenever you want it.  And the people who have opted for one brand or the other have done so for their own very unique and special reasons. And might be loyal customers or might change. That's why the race for new and more vigorous applications we can instantly plug in and use on our smart phones are so important for the phone manufacturer to grow market share and expand into new markets. (Three times as many smartphones are used in China than in the USA...about 1.BILLION.)  new markets indeed!

It is amazing, to me, how, more so than ever,judge people by the technology they have! We expect our clients, peers and colleagues to have an up to the minute laptop or tablet; perhaps both. We expect them to have a smart phone where they can check email, text messages and retrieve files from anywhere they are on the planet as well as being able to give an instant presentation to an audience of thousands.

We expect them to know the weather, their calendar of meetings, their favorite places to eat and drink in every major and minor city on the eplanete and to have their airline boarding passes on their phone. Anything less than having these items immediately available plants a “negative” about them into our very judgmental psyche, We also expect them to have Email, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts; perhaps even a Pinterest account.

Not to mention travel aps, driving aps, and the world at our "always ready to Google fingers" ap.  If you thinks "aps" are appetizers, read this blog several times because aps are applications or mini programs you can use on your smart phone to find anything (and I do mean ANYTHING) in a matter of seconds. Anything longer and your ap is obsolete.

And when they are unable to perform any electronic or digital task, our frustration meter skyrockets. “What you don't have or use this tool?” we say.  “What are you, a   Neanderthal?

C'mon man! Get with the program; you're getting left behind.” We mutter under our breath…sometimes not softly enough.

But what is weird to me when I send emails to people in the industry I get x% to respond. When I send faxes, I get X% PLUS.   Huh????

What does that say about some of the people who are running bowling centers? Are they so behind the “times?”  Does their bowling center communicate that too? Does their marketing communicate that as well?

For those of you who are more familiar with faxes and land lines then Emails, Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn and smart phones, stop what you are doing NOW and go find someone or some educational institution who can get you up and  into the 21^st century as quickly as possible.

It may be funny, but you are losing business by not knowing how to use these tools more effectively to generate more revenue and more customers.

More importantly, you're missing a lot of usable information to drive your business…and  a bit of fun!

Make It Better

I have been avoiding writing this blog for at least a week, maybe more.  Actually its nine (9) days but who is counting?

It’s my 400^th blog since I started and I wanted it to be oh so special; to be the best one I ever did; to have it either awaken the sleeping giant in my readers or to stimulate their creative juices

What I wanted, in reality, was for it to be better than anything I wrote.

The words to the Beatles “Hey Jude” song, “…take a sad song and make it better, better, better" kept rattling around in my head.

And then I got to thinking, always an adventure for my “made in outer space” brain.

When I ask proprietors who their target market is, they will often say “everybody.”  

In that one word they are saying that their market is a mass market and therefore they are willing to produce average stuff for average people.  There is hardly a plan for making “better.”

In fact they will freely admit that their bowling center is like all others. The lanes, the balls, the pins; all have to meet exacting specifications as established by the USBC.

But that is far from the point as proven by the advent and growth of boutique centers and BEC’s (Bowling Entertainment Centers where bowling is the lynch pin in the facility).

It is predominantly in this segment where we see huge revenue per lane numbers. Whereas the average center hovers around $38,000 annual revenue per lane; it is not unusual to see a BEC do two or even three times that number. Awesome!

For these new entrepreneurs, they have fully grasped the concept of “better” and clearly understand that “good enough” is NOT “good enough.”

One of the first people to realize this was Henry Ford. With the development of the assembly line and vertical production processes, Ford could control the steel making process for the cars body and the assembly of its parts. He could control the sheep he raised which produced the wool that went into the stuffing of his car seats and headliners

In an age when auto makers felt that a car was a car, Ford made a “better car.”

How did he do that?  First he hired workers and paid them $5 per hour as compared to the industry’s then standard of 50 cents per hour.  His assembly line process cut the manufacturing time of cars virtually by two thirds.

So here was Henry, producing the Model T, a ‘better” car sold at one third of what other vehicles of the day sold for and was produced in less than half the time. The result was the ubiquitous Model T that outsold every competitor by at least a 2 to 1 margin.

If you step back and look at other products you will see that the search for better products is never ending; unfortunately not so much in the bowling industry.

Now I am not talking about automatic scorers and bumpers and glow in the dark lanes, I am talking about your open play and league products.

Take an existing product like cosmic bowl. Everybody pretty much runs it the same way. Turn off the lights, crank up the music, take requests and have it.

Where is the quest to make that product better?  Here are some ideas I brainstormed with a few 21 to 25 year olds.

Not All of Them Are Practical or Even Doable, but They Represent a “Quest for BETTER”

1.   Have live bands at least a couple of times a month.

2.  Run dance contests in the bar or on the concourse or on a wooden dance floor you put down on the concourse.

3.  Conduct theme parties for 70’s, 80’s and 90’s decades as well as country and rap music  on a weekly basis and award prizes for best outfits that represent that period.

4.  Set up a miniature hula hoop on the lanes and make people bowl thru the hula hoop. (Please don’t ask me how to technically do that; but I know somebody will figure that out!)

5.  Use the Baker system of scoring; something that the open play customer has probably never seen before to add a “better team experience.”

6.  If you have the kind of equipment that can set up different spares, then do that in the 1^st  game; bumper bowling where you have to hit at least two rails in the 2^nd game and 9 pin no tap in the 3^rd game.

7.  Run a karaoke cosmic contest where each lane of people have to sing at least some part of a song together and let the other lanes rate them. The winning team gets cool cosmic karaoke t shirts.

8.  Cover the masking units so the pins cannot be seen when the bowler bowls. He only sees them on the overhead monitors.

9.  Run the 40 frame game in a cosmic fashion with prizes at the end.

10. Make the 3^rd. 6^th and 9^th frame a “double jeopardy frame” where bowlers would get double their score for whatever number of pins knocked down in those frames

Now, some of you are probably saying, “Fred, that’s too weird, even for you!”

So let me tell you one more story about a simple shopping experience: “buying a shirt.”

One of my friends, a Wall Street type guy went to Frankfurt Germany to negotiate a deal. When he arrived at his hotel and opened his suitcase, he noticed that as a result of his toothpaste tube pretty much exploding; his two business shirts had light green stains on them.

In a panic mode, he raced down to the concierge who assured him that a men’s clothing store was directly under the hotel and his shirt problem would be efficiently solved.

As he made his purchase, the owner suggested he try it on and then the store’s tailor would press it for him. As he was trying it on, he noticed that the mirror was more like an LED screen.  He pushed the start button and the menu said things like “suggest a tie, suggest a sweater, and suggest trousers.

He pushed the suggest ties button and thru the magic of technology, there he was with his shirt on and various ties kept popping up, neatly tied around his neck which he could see on the LED screen.

Of course he bought two new ties and went back for another shirt. For my friend, as he was regaling us with this story, he said, more than once, “This was the best shopping experience I ever had. IT was BETTER than any other shopping sojourn.”

There you have it.  Someone or some bodies made a mundane task like shopping for a shirt a BETTER EXPERIENCE.”

Moral of this long story: if you are not constantly trying to improve your product, then you are going backwards because other centers, other entertainment options will do the same thing, only better” and customers always want better. Always.

P.S.  I sincerely thank all of you for faithfully for reading “Fredquarters Blog”, engaging with me and giving me the opportunity to be of service to you.  I sincerely hope you like this “Better” blog.

I wish you a great fall kick off..

A Commodities Discussion

Recently, I heard a noted industry marketing guru stand in front of an audience of bowling proprietors and tell them that bowling “is a commodity industry.”

I wanted to shoot him or at least destroy any chance of him having additional offspring.

Unfortunately it has become that because of the overpowering (and incorrect belief) that proprietors have of consumers’ perception of bowling, (I.E “all they care about is price, they just want to get the buying experience over with by buying cheap.”)

Thus, we have proprietors leading each other over the cliff by selling bowling at the lowest possible price just so they have traffic, just so they can sell a beer, rent a pair of shoes or sell a hot dog.  It is this thinking that has led proprietors to being unable to maintain their centers, to improve their centers or to pay more for better personnel. 

Is that why I see more bowling centers closing?  Not enough capital to do any of the aforementioned?” Yeah, I think so and that leads to an inferior and less desirable product which leads to fewer customers,  less revenue and eventually to posting this sign: “Out of Business.”

When an industry marketing guru or a proprietor says that “all the customers' care about is price”, the guru is really saying that the customer believes that nothing about the product matters to them. In fact the product is no longer the discussion; the price becomes the discussion.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

No, you can’t make bowling interesting to all, but you can get those that are interested in your newest innovations to care and TALK ABOUT IT.

Remember that bumper bowling was invented by a proprietor who used carpet rolls which morphed into blow up bumpers which morphed into automatic bumpers which morphed into greater interest in bowling among families with children.

The closest I have seen is Gordon Murray’s Profit Platform which turns the bowling center into a music and rock show. Now that’s innovation that cannot be confused with commoditization. (No Gordon didn't pay me to say this, but he should :)

 So who out there has the next “carpet roll?”

"The Numbers Is The Numbers."

Lots of my clients are very good with the numbers. They are constantly reviewing,  measuring, from a multitude of angles, including lineage by type, by time, by weekend, weekday, night, day, shift, revenue per game,  food and beverage revenue per game, shoe rental income per game and number of clicks on Facebook, websites, coupon redemption, payroll percentages, shoe rental to open play ratios and on and on. Some even measure revenue per square foot.  

Other clients measure revenue in more of an “overview way” they know the numbers, but they don’t delve as deeply s group number one described above. Instead they spend their time creating a better bowling experience.

In my humble opinion, organizations that do NOTHING BUT review numbers are hard pressed to make creative breakthroughs. 

Because they’re so busy measuring and tallying and dividing and multiplying, there is no room in their day for experimentation and testing ideas.  Even if they should come up with a great idea, it would have to run the gauntlet of “review and measure”.  Rarely, if ever do these ideas survive.  That’s why there are so few companies called “Apple”, “Google” or “Facebook.” 

Numbers review is great. I am all for it, but please give creativity a chance to fail. Because if you are not failing, you will never have a success and a breakthrough.  

And that would be a shame.