If you Travel Enough

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?

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?

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.

5 pillars of success

The five pillars of success

1. 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.

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.