On Monday, July 29th
I gave a presentation to the Michigan bowling proprietors at their summer convention
in Mt Pleasant MI; this well attended event was held at the Soaring Eagle casino
I titled my presentation “Get a New Plan, Stan" because I felt that we had been planning for fall
leagues the same way for over 50 years and perhaps, just maybe there was
another way to do it.
While I won’t give
you the whole presentation in this blog, I want to make one point that may turn
your head around and get you to thinking about Fall League bowling marketing in
a different light.
Suppose that, instead
of being in the bowling business, you were in the widget making business and
each widget you made you sold for $500. Last
year, you sold 1,000 widgets and your company, which makes other products as
well, therefore had revenue of $500,000 just from this one product.
This year, you are
charged with producing 1100 visits. The Board of Directors wants a 10% sales increase
so they can take the company public. You
are at the Board meeting when they tell you this and then one of the Board members
pipes up and asks what you think it will cost, from a marketing perspective, to
get to 600 widgets?
I explained this
scenario to the bowling proprietors in the room and they were pretty much
silent. One gentleman said $10,000. Others said $15,000. Someone even mumbled something about $20,000.
Now when I asked
them how much they currently spend to sell 1000 of their $500 widgets (league
bowlers), they were virtually silent. No one in the room spent more than $2500
with the vast majority spending NOTHING!!
Can you imagine
that to protect our sacred base of league bowlers, the majority of proprietors said
they spend nothing? Now I don’t want to sound like I’m picking on the Michigan
guys ‘cause I’m not. I guarantee you this is true in every state of the nation –
and I know because I have been in every state, over 1,000 centers, and Michigan
was just the most recent example.
Why do we invest
so little in selling our product? Do we not have faith in the product? Do we
not have confidence in our ability to market it successfully or have “we always
done it that way. Perhaps the real
reason there are less bowlers is because NOBODY PROMOTED LEAGUE BOWLING IN THE
FALL.
Even with our
employees, we are frugal. “Here’s a dollar a bowler”, we say. Are You Kidding? That bowler widget is worth
$500 in revenue to you and you’re going to give someone a dollar to bust their
buns for you. Why should they? Some of
you don’t even call your league bowlers back, but still leave it to the league secretaries
who have NO vested interest in paying your mortgage.
Some don’t even send out direct mail, but instead
send out emails. Hey, knock; knock less than 12% of your emails ever get
opened. You have to take massive action,
direct mail, email, telemarketing, robo calls, targeted communications about
leagues to specific segments, outside sales, REAL incentives for league bowlers
and employees to bring a friend or get a sign up respectively!
You have to use all the tools you can find;
not just sit back and wait for the league secretary to tell you how YOUR
BUSINESS is doing.
C’mon man. Get in the
game and spend some money to protect and grow one of the biggest parts of your
business. Because the way things are
going (about 2mm league bowlers down from 10mm); you’re almost at the bottom of
the barrel.
I guess my back is
hurting more than I thought tonight so that’s my rant for July 31, 2013.
