Are You Asking For A Call To Action?

It might seem like a simple concept, but people are more likely to do something if you specifically ask them.  Add the words, "please re tweet" to the end of your tweets.  Include "Like us" on "Facebook" on your Facebook page, and add things like "Please comment below" to the bottom of your blog posts. 

Seems pretty simple, but so few of the Facebook posts I get or tweets have these simple instructions.

Moreover, the fliers that I see in centers have very little calls to action. I rarely ever see a "sign up now"  or call "123 456 7891 to reserve your spot.

For a call to action to be meaningful it should:

•       Tell the reader or respondent exactly what action he or she should take Call? Go to a website? Tear off the coupon? Go to a meeting?  Call back? What do you specifically want me to do?

•       When do you want me to do this by?  Always, always put a deadline on your call to action so it invokes a sense of urgency in the customer's mind?

•       Provide the customer with a reason to take the action NOW. Save money if you order earlier?  Get a better offer next time? Hold the space at the same price for a friend?  Get a FREE (premium) if you order or reserve now?

•      Once the respondent acts upon your offer, you should have a way to get right back to the respondent and notify him that his space was reserved, his party confirmed and that his "order" was acknowledged.  Check out "auto responder" software on the Internet. Check out "Constant Contact or "Icontact". Then when someone subscribes to your blog or newsletter, you can immediately acknowledge his or her purchase and then ask for a referral.

It's hard enough to get some one's attention these days so once you have it, your goal is to make sure that person takes specific action.

If you leave that action to chance, well, that's a chance you will be taking.

"Please leave a comment at the bottom or like us on Facebook." :)

Conventional Wisdom

These days, "conventional wisdom" is akin to: "what almost everyone believes to be true", but upon closer examination conventional wisdom is not always, er, conventional.  By that I mean,  the conventional wisdom we speak of  is often incorrect. Here is an example:

I recently read "Quiet: The Power Of Introverts in a World That can't Stop Talking"" by Susan Cain.  Ms. Cain claims that she got the message early: there was something wrong with her introverted and quiet style and therefore she should try to change it since extroverts were "the ideal" and she just didn't measure up.  In our society, talkers are widely perceived as smarter, even though SAT scores did not confirm that hypothesis.
Look at Moses, Jesus, Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Not an extrovert in the bunch!

This is just one example of conventional wisdom being wrong.
Want some more?

"If man was meant to fly, God would have given him wings." - Anonymous
"Nobody will buy a personal computer." - IBM
"Automobiles are just a passing fancy." - Anonymous
"We're in the railroad business." - Pullman  (He should have been in the transportation business, right)

• Have you examined the conventional wisdom about marketing your bowling center and have you challenged it or have you waved off  "the weird," "the absurd," the-never-worked-here-answers" of those with more (ahem) experience?
• Have you questioned all the conventional answers, or questioned the questioners or asked different questions? One question you should always ask is: "Why would I buy this product (promotion), (program) if (and depending on the target)
• a- I haven't been bowling in years, 
• b- Bowled once or twice a year 
• c- Was a league bowler
• How can I embrace or look for something that is a breakthrough.  No "IT" hasn't all been done before.  And that type of conventional wisdom will kill any presumption of birthing a new idea. There is allot out there and technology is opening up new doors for you every day.  Embrace it. Change it.  Punch it in the mouth and shake it up.

Here's the lesson: Conventional wisdom, no matter how we feel about,  is often dead wrong. If we assume it is right, then we limit our options to solve a problem or take on a new task and ultimately it limits the range of our debate. 

So go out there, shake it up.   Maybe even ask an introvert. Hey, you never know :)

What Steve Jobs Can Teach The Bowling Industry

I just finished reading Steve Job's autobiography by Walter Isaacson. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. You can get it at www.Amazon.com for your Kindle reader, I Pad or even I Phone and probably for an Android device you may have.

Steve Jobs

While Jobs was mercurial, temperamental, a bully and totally lacking in social graces, he was also a brilliant "magician genius" who could charm the likes of Bill Gates to provide software for Apple, bully the likes of big music companies to help him create an Apple I Tunes store as well as to blow off Intel to develop his own A4 computer chip for the I Phone.

More importantly, his focus and intensity were unrelenting.  He had the unique ability to focus not only on the big picture vision of the product, but also to get involved in the shape and design of the staircase that he would put into the Apple store or the size, color, layout and diameter of a circuit board that NO consumer would ever see. To Jobs, even the circuit board had to look beautiful.

We in the bowling industry could learn a few things from Steve Jobs.  Of the many lessons, I learned from his book, here are, I believe the three most salient ones.

1. When he took the reins back from John Sculley, Apple's existing CEO at the time, Apple had hundreds of products in the works, far too many even for Apple to do a great job on.  Apple was basically lost, so Jobs first task was to pear down the product list to just four or five that his teams could work on.  The result was the I Pod, the I Phone and I Tunes followed by the I Pad. Makes you want to look at your products, doesn't it?  If you worked to make 2 open play programs not just better, but awesome and 2 league programs awesome, wouldn't you be more focused? Or your corporate parties or fund raisers?
2. Make the products the best they can be and make the users experience the best it can be. Focus on the products, not the profit. When Scully was in charge, Apple focused on the profits and the stock dropped to under $10. When Jobs was in charge, the stock went to over $400. Apple today is at $583 and the company is worth $546 Billion Dollars!!  That's what focusing on the product does for you and your company.
3. The challenge for good centers, profitable centers and those that are surviving and wish to be even more profitable as well as manufacturers and distributors is, and this is our strategic challenge:  How can we build a product or service that our customers don't know they want until they see it.  Now while I am a believer in market research, I think you need to start with a vision of  a model to test as opposed to just asking people what they want. After all if Henry Ford would have asked people what they want before he built the Model A, they probably would have said, "A Faster Horse."

Thank You for reading this. What do you think? What are your comments?

What Larry The Cable Guy can Teach Us About Marketing

Larry The Cable Guy, a comedian from, I believe, Louisiana, has a take on comedy that stems from his blue collar view of the world.  In his world, nothing is sacred. Wives, husbands, homes, dogs, kids and jobs; he goes after 'em all.  But his motto, at the end of almost every joke is "Git R Done." And that's probably the best marketing advice anyone can give us.

When I work with clients and lay out a marketing program along with to do action steps, assign responsibilities, timetables, write the copy, design the emails, update their website, provide them with Facebook posts, blog/newsletters, flier copy, telephone answering techniques, train the staff for inside sales and outside sales, I am sometimes surprised that during my follow up conversations I come to find out that they didn't implement.

When I ask why, I would get answers like:

• Something came up and we had to have all hands on deck to solve that problem
• We were too busy
• We had some people out sick and just couldn't get to it
• I went on vacation and my people didn't do it
• The dog ate the notes
• I couldn't open the attachments
• My marketing girl quit
• My kids came in from Chicago and we had to babysit the grandkids
• I had too much paperwork and had to empty vending machines
• And on and on

Bottom line: It didn't get done because Mr./Ms. Proprietor did not see it as a priority or if they did it became less important than flipping burgers because the snack bar girl didn't come in.  All too often it didn't get done because the proprietor did not have the discipline to get it done or didn't impart a sense of urgency upon his/her staff. 

And if  building your business is not your priority, then what else is?

At that point, I become the so called "nag" and bug the center to get it done.  Finally, when all is implemented and the program is a success, the proprietor finally "gets it" and like Larry The Cable Guy, he understands what it means to "Git R Done."

Ideas with out action are worthless. 

Action without a plan is mindless.  

But planning with action taken will crush it...and make you money.


So if you're not there for the money (and the fun) what are you doing in that box anyway?
Git R Done!

You Can't Take It Back

Yesterday, the local news reported that a woman who donated her kidney to her boss, and was subsequently fired by her 6 weeks after the organ transplant, wanted her kidney back.  No she can't have it back declared the judge. "You made the commitment to donate your organ based on your goodwill towards your boss and because you were let go, that is not a reason to get it back. Case dismissed."

In the same vein, there are some things in business that you can't get back either.

If you haven't trained that new desk employee how to be a problem solver and a marketing coordinator, you will end up with a "shoe sprayer".  No, you can't have that back.

If you haven't invested marketing dollars to promote your business, you can't have the lost sales back.

If you didn't plan your menu and cost of sales accordingly, no you can't have the dollars you left on the table back

If you have no outside sales effort that targets companies, schools, organizations, non profit groups and clubs then you can't have those lost sales back either.

If you're waiting for a new idea with years of proof positive experience that it works, then no you can't have the lost time you spent waiting come back.

If you rarely hold staff meetings and rarely inspect the service element of your business, then you can't have those customers, who left because of poor customer service, come back.

If your social media sites are not attended to daily, weekly and monthly, then you can't have those lost site visits, clicks and party reservations come back either.

If you are not constantly looking for new ways to improve traffic flow, lineage and revenue, then you can't have those lost games back either.

If you haven't invested in your facility, then you can't have those customers, who pass it by because it looks  shabby, come back for a wonderful experience.

If you don't get involved in your local community as a sponsor, a fund raiser or a member of a local group, then you can't expect these people to want to do business with you.

Bottom line; if you do nothing to get more business, don't expect your business to come back.

There's A New Sheriff In Town

Social networking site Pinterest is gaining popularity in the media and among brands. This "online pin board" allows participants to organize and share all the things they find on the web. This includes images of food, home, decor, clothing and furniture which users "pin" to their pages.  They could also pin images of bowling at your center.

Here is some data on Pinterest according to "Hitwise" a digital marketing research company.

* Visits tot his invitation only site increased in the second half of 2011 to 11 million viewers, an increase of 40% from just 6 months earlier.
* Visitors skewed female 958%) and between the ages of 25 to 44 (59%).
* The greatest share of visits come from the states of California and Texas and is strongest in the Southeast and Northwest.

What Pinterest gives the bowling operator, the FEC operator and any other company looking to speak to women is a greater share of the minds of women 25 to 44, predominantly young Moms or single women.

Pinterest is here to stay and will undoubtedly grow even stronger. You need to look at this new social media channel and see how it can work for you.

In an age of ever expanding social media networks, you cannot afford to not being aware, involved and noticed on these new sites, simply because your customers and potential customers are moving there.  If you don't your customers will begin to ask: Why isn't Happy Lanes Here? And that is not a place you want to be.

You may not think you have to be on all these social media sites, but the reality is you do; because your customers expect it.

Check these social media networks and see if you are involved *Facebook, *Twitter, *Linked In, *Google+,
*Pinterest.

 And especially, checkout the new Sheriff in town, and she is called http://pinterest.com/

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.