Social Media Thoughts

You know, we are doing something wrong.

I see so many bowling centers, mini golf courses, FEC's and other types of entertainment facilities that are so proud they have a Facebook page that they cannot wait to show and tell it to every body who will care to see it. In fact, their "Social" media page has turned into a 21st century fax or a traditional print advertisement or, worse, a flier to blatantly sell their product.

No, no,no. Social media is just that. Its social. Think of all these social networks as a party. You wouldn't go to a party, and after you say, "Hi I'm Fred", then say, "I'm only at this party to sell you my consulting services; here's what I'm selling, here's what it costs, so sign up today." Hell No! These folks would look at you like you're the biggest *%$#@ on the planet.

Yet that's exactly what we do with our Facebook pages and Twitter tweets. I must get 20 tweets a day that are trying to sell me something and just as many Facebook notifications about the great entertainment programs XYZ center is offering and why I should buy it NOW. Why should I? I really don't even know you. Just because i signed up to be your friend (because you are a friend of a friend) doesn't mean I always want to be sold by you.

Treat me like a friend first. That's what social media is about. Its about making friends at a party and then, if I have a nice conversation with my new acquaintances, I might invite them to my party for drinks, dinner and some friendly conversation. My party is my blog. It is where I tell you more about me, my family, my experiences, what I do, what my interest are and what I do for a living.

And it is in my blog where I try to share some information, some ideas and some thoughts with them; to tell them a little bit more about me as a person. I still treat them like a friend and just talk to them. I tell them what I'm thinking, what I like, where I have been and where I want to go. But I don't sell.

Think of it this way. Suppose I sell RV's (tough time for that business, isn't it?) and some of the people who I have invited to visit my RV blog probably would never buy an RV, not in a million years, but they visit my blog anyway cause I'm a nice guy and they like my ideas, find them thought provoking, interesting and they just like me for who I am.

What if, by chance, they know somebody who is interested in buying an RV and they tell that person, "Hey I just met Fred, he's kind of cool and he sells RV's. Why don't you check out his blog or his web site" See. I just got a great recommendation, a credible referral and a highly qualified prospect who trusts the person who referred me. That's social networking at its best.

Now if your blog (or party)is remarkable as Seth Godin, the author of Purple Cow Marketing, preaches, people will notice you. Remarkable is merely that. Something to remark about. Something for someone else to tell someone else about.

If you stop selling your products on your Facebook page, your Twitter tweets and your umpteen social networking pages, as your guru computer person told you about, you'll make more friends, gain greater word of mouth advertising and get more referrals.

And that's from me to you with no sales. But if you want to send my blog to one of your friends, that's OK too.

The CMO

I think every entertainment center should have a CMO.

The CMO is the one who insists that getting things done is more important than thinking about getting things done. The CMO knows when someone in the organization (hope it is not you) is so hung up on getting it perfect that this someone is standing in the way of "good". Doesn't have to be perfect. Just has to better than the stuff that is out there now. Introduce it fast, perfect it later. We're not talking about a pharmaceutical product or a heart lung machine here. We're talking about fun.

The CMO is the person that does not care that the dog ate your homework or that you had too many other things to do. The CMO knows that excuses are cancerous and everyone is out of excuses as to why it did not get done. If you and your employees are falling behind on deadlines, then you need a CMO, and you need it now!

Know what CMO stands for?
Chief Meaning Officer.

You've got to learn to dance in the rain.

While the current recession may be easing, or so we are told, many small businesses are still reacting the way they have always reacted in difficult times; they cut price on their product and/or services.

Some are more creative than others. Some will package products together for a one price special. Others will discount certain products only if you buy another product at full price and still others will create specials for certain "holidays, day parts or time periods" as is applicable to their specific business.

Is this dancing in the rain? Is this the only way we MUST deal with difficult times? I don't think so. I think its the same old same old that we have always done; only we are more creative now...or so we think.

The real dance in the rain takes place with your existing customers, the people who brought you to the dance in the first place. They are the people to whom your marketing should be directed; the ones who know you and like you. Get them to visit your business more frequently and to spend more on each visit. Chasing new customers is far more expensive and less "long term" than insuring that your existing customers will continue to "prefer" your business rather than a competitor's business.

Have you given them an incentive to refer a friend, bring a friend or sign up a friend to buy your service or product? Have you marketed to these people about NEW programs you have and how you want to invite them in for a FREE screening or VIP guest night (everybody wants to feel special!)? Have you treated them to remarkable experiences?

As good marketers we must be able to precisely define our best customers ; how frequently they come to our business, what they typically spend and when they are most likely to come to our establishment. Then, if we market our product to them, we can essentially ask them to be our ambassadors; to spread the word to their friends and create new customers without necessarily cutting our price.

Why will they do that for us? Simply because they like their experience at our facility. They like the product and think they get good value for their dollar. And all they need is a little reminder and a little incentive to spread some serious Word of or Mouth advertising for you.

If you are relying on email "coupon"blasts to do this for you, you might be wasting lots of time. Broad brush couponing is not nearly as effective as "targeted direct incentives" that are relevant to specific segments. In fact recent studies suggest that less than 15% of these "email blasts" even get opened.

The 21 year old cosmic bowler is far different than the 25 to 44 year old Mom with 2 kids, especially when it comes to choosing an entertainment option. Recognizing their differences is the first step in creating relevant incentives to get them to come back more frequently.

So just because you have a bunch of emails doesn't mean you have a data based marketing system. if you cannot segment your market by usage and again by demographic data, your data base isn't a data base at all. Its an electronic mailing list

And just because a business has survived other hard times by cutting prices to hold onto market share doesn't' mean that the business really knows how to dance in the rain. Look at how many small businesses have folded in the past year. Do you not think they too cut prices, before they went out of business?

If only they knew how to dance in the rain, maybe they would have been around when the sun finally comes out.

vacation

Leaving JFK yesterday i watched the anxiety on the faces of most travelers. Would they get through security on time for their flights? Would their bags get to the destination on time and would they have a safe flight? It was just another consumer buying decision. Every buying decision involves a risk. Every transaction is based on some particle of faith that says "if you buy this product or service, it will meet your expectations". Sometimes the product achieves that goal and sometimes it doesn't. That's because consumers really only want two things: to increase their pleasure or to reduce their pain. You can talk about wants, needs, convenience, problem solving, etc. all you want, but its all about increasing pleasure and reducing pain. And the engine that drives these two needs is HOPE. Hope is that invisible space when the money changes hands and the product or service is delivered. Hope is what consumers have when they come into your entertainment facility. Will they get increased pleasure for their money or find someway to reduce the pain of boredom and tedium?

For your customers, Hope is what they cling to. For your business HOPE is NOT a strategy.
So what is the strategy for your business? Do you just want to make it through another season; fill one more hole; get more traffic or are you really looking at the business from a 3 to 5 year standpoint? Or are you just hoping that something good will happen?

Achieving short term growth at the expense of longer term plans is like selling your first born to protect the other children. No parent would ever do that so why are we so anxious about long range business planning?

Start with one question: "Where do I want to be in 5 years and what do I want my business to look like?" write 'em down, send it to me. It will be interesting.

Read the book "Hope is Not A Strategy" By Rick Page. Learn about complex sales. Learn about strategy. Learn...continuously.

Disconnected

I misplaced my cell phone yesterday; left it in a friend's car as I ran for a plane at the airport. Fortunately my friend was able to send it back via Fed Ex and I will have it tomorrow.

What a terrible feeling. I spoke with quite a few people today and they all said the same thing; "isn't it horrible?". Yes it is, but it got me to thinking.

How would we market our business if we could not connect electronically with our market? How would we try to connect? Would we just rely on traditional forms of media or would we try to invent a new way to connect that isn't yet available? Or maybe invent a non electronic form of Twitter or Face Book.

When we were kids, we might have had a "pen pal?" That was a precursor of Face book. We sent information to people and they wrote back to us. We exchanged pictures and talked about our lives. If we were hip, we could have used it as a sales opportunity. In fact we eventually did. It was called direct response marketing.

Perhaps, being in the retail business, we could go back to our 5 mile rings of influence or 10 mile rings of influence to reach our market, either via direct mail, telemarketing, sales appointments and local or regional advertising. Shouldn't we still do that? Recent reports have stated that marketing results increase exponentially, just by adding postcards, permission based faxes and robo calls to our E marketing efforts.

While conventional wisdom states that E marketing must be a cornerstone of your total marketing effort, it doesn't say that it should be the ONLY part.

Grins, Smiles and Laughs

As an observer of human behavior, I sometimes like to see if I can pick up patterns of behavior among people sharing a common experience; like flying on an airplane. So far I have been able to isolate various segments of fliers. There are the readers, the writers, the sleepers and the lookers. At any given time any one of these people can shift into another group; sometimes they are in two groups (segments) at the same time. And if I studied these groups long enough, I would probably find out what motivated them to be in their respective group to start with.

Now what if you could observe people having fun at your entertainment center, based upon "product usage", and then segment them by how they are experiencing fun? What would you find? Would you find "laughers, grinners and smilers"? Would you find h that each group interpreted and responded to fun differently? Would you find that there was a way to motivate each of these groups to come back more frequently? I think so.

Susan Dunn, Publisher of Self Growth, an on line self improvement magazine (www.selfgrowth.com)has recently come up with an interesting treatise on "having fun".

While she asks people what their definition of fun is, the answers she gets are surprisingly stated in the negative.

"not thinking or feeling"
"being alone"
"anywhere without decisions or arguments"
"something that doesn't end me up with a policeman, a lawyer, a doctor or a therapist."

See what I mean. Fun is expressed as "the absence of a bad thing". Shouldn't fun be expressed in terms of smiles or laughs? What if there was a happiness meter, a "laughometer" or a "smilometer"? We could then gauge how happy people were at our centers or how effective our programs were on delivering fun.

Or we could just go out there every day and try to make just 3 customers a day smile. What do you think that would do to our revenue growth?

If you Travel Enough