Everyman Reactions

Some reactions to my "Everyman" post below I thought you would be interested in reading.  Thank you for your comments. Always appreciated

Fred,
I have wondered for years why we don't have a national advertising program (generic) to promote our industry product. I have an annual advertising budget of about $20,000. for TV/radio and use it all up.
It would also be helpful if BPAA, USBC would do some advertising to also promote the sport/recreation to the "Everyman." 

We always see ads for PBA leading up to the show, usually on ESPN only but that is geared to the avid bowler. Do not get me wrong i am a fan of the Tour, but it would aleast be nice if they would end the show by expressing "Hey take someone to bowl with you." or "Go bowling." 

We also need this in front of the public for the "Everyman", as you stated, from BPAA and USBC. Any idea why this hasn't happened?

Mike 
Michael Widmar General Manager Heritage Lanes Bowling Center Oklahoma City, OK.   http://www.heritagelanesokc.com/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             email:  email: heritagelanes@sbcglobal.net

Fred,                                                                                                                                    Great piece. I particularly resonated to your comment that local proprietors as a group seldom advertise/promote any more. 

I can remember a time when every city and most state BPA groups ran many ads, joint promotions, etc and generally made a lot of noise about bowling. We have to bring that back.
Your point that bowling generally is invisible is right on.Sandy HansellSandy Hansell and Associates, Inc.Email: sandyhansell@aol.com 

What do you think?. Please let me know. As always I thank you for reading this. :)

fred

"Everyman"

“Everyman” can bowl, but "Everyman" no longer does.

Fortunately, some men and women still bowl. Approximately 1% of the 200 million adults are in sanctioned leagues and another 70+ million people open play bowl about 2.5 times a year…at least that’s what the surveys say.

But, if you speak to proprietors around the country, as I do, you’ll find that there has been a significant fall off in open play in the last 90 days.

How come? Some will say its gas prices.  Others will say it’s the sunny weekend weather.  Others will blame the “general” economy.”

But if you speak to people who haven’t bowled recently, they will simply tell you, “Gee, I didn’t even think about bowling as an option. Movies, dinner, visiting friends, that's about it."

And that’s the problem; "Everyman" doesn’t hear about us, see us or think about us.

Sure we communicate to our data base, to OUR customers and send them great offers and great promotions.  We even may call  them or send postcards to them. And that’s as far as we go.

But what about “Everyman?”  To him, we are, at best, a faint distant whisper in his head.  We don’t get on radio or cable and hardly anyone believes in placing newspaper anymore.

Yet in my work with car dealers, I notice how dependent they are on local cable even though their manufacturers also advertise. Yes, they use their data base and send out emails and have Facebook pages.  But time and time again, when they mount a campaign and use their resources across all different forms of media, not just digital media, they get their best results. 

And when as a group of local dealers get together, they go right to TV as their #1 medium of choice…and they’re selling $25,000+ products, financing, terms and a million variations to closing ONE sale. We’re selling a relatively easy product…one game of bowling and those cool shoe rentals.

Are we that much different from them?  Aren’t they selling to “Everyman” as well?  Aren’t movies, amusement parks, theme parks, restaurants, sports teams, mini golf courses, FEC’s, party places and clubs also selling to “Everyman?”  You see them on cable TV, right?  But hardly do you ever see bowling!!”

So I ask the question, “Why are we, apparently, the only entertainment option not using ‘the new TV’ and the multi faceted radio?”

Why are proprietors, in too many markets, no longer getting together to promote their business? 

When will "Everyman" hear about "GO BOWLING" again?

Shoot Yourself With Low Prices

Every day, I get to speak to quite a few small business men (women) in various industries.  All these interactions in various industries help me to hone my perceptions so I can help people in other industries. The challenges are almost always transportable from one industry to another.

The interesting thing is that when a business has already decided to be the low price leader, they have gone to the point of last refuge.

And usually at that point I cant help them.  Once they decide to be that low price leader, they cut back on service, hours, product innovation,old and new media and are relying on good old fashioned greed, "They'll come in because I have the lowest price and everybody wants the lowest price."

As I pack my bag to leave and respectfully tell them I really cannot help them, they always ask "why?'  My answer is always the same.

"Ask Montgomery Wards, Woolworth, Korvettes, Klein's, Ohrbachs and Fortunoff stores.  All low price retailers.  And all out of business. The low price position kills. It is the sword of Damocles that hangs over your head.  Use it at your own risk."

What Matters

Sometimes we do work that gets noticed and other times we do work that doesn’t get noticed. Sometimes it is merely dust in the wind.


The essence of our work, it’s very soul if you will, is to do work that is relevant to the people we serve in our market.


Doesn't matter how many hours we put in.

Doesn’t matter how many promotions we have tried.

Doesn’t matter how many seminars we have attended.

Doesn’t matter how many superstar managers we have hired.

Doesn’t matter how lean and mean we run.

Doesn't matter how much we have invested.

Doesn't matter how the other guy undercuts us.

The only thing that matters is that the work we do gets a positive reaction from our prospects and our customers and they trust us enough to do business with us again and again.

Fun In The Sun Marketing

May 2012,  East River, NYC

After a great weekend of sun and fun on the East Coast, the weatherman has now promised 4 or 5 days of rain and then some more sun...on the weekend! 

Great if you like to do stuff outdoors, but not so great if you’re a bowling proprietor or an FEC Operator.

Since we can’t fight the weather, why not do something different??  Remember "different is good"

•  Invite people to bowl in your parking lot during the day. Maybe even roller skate in your parking lot? 

• Offer them free bowling, outside, on a sunny Saturday or Sunday.  Or do it as a fund raiser (where people would pledge $X per pin for their own charity).  If you run it as a fund raiser send an email to all charities you have in your data base and ask them to send it to their donors and employees.

• All you have to do is get their email to remind them to send their money to their charity. GET THEIR EMAIL!

• Or do it for the publicity and send a press release out to local newspapers, radio stations, Mommy bloggers, Café Moms and (Your town's name Moms.com).  Distribute information on your center’s Facebook page and ask your employees to distribute it to their friends too.  Don’t forget the Twitter bird J.

• You may need a one or two day license to distribute soft drinks, beer and food outside.  If you can’t, then have food menus and bar menus available and direct people inside.  Maybe they’ll decide to bowl in the AC.

• Of course, you will also have your newest league or short season programs available as well as the cool air conditioned comfort of open play programs when the sun goes down.

• If customers can bowl a frozen turkey, outside, in the winter in Wisconsin then they can bowl outside in the summer.

You’re right. It is a pain in the butt to set up. And its hot. And you'll have to open your snack bar. And you'll have to add labor hours. And it might not work anyway.  But then again, what really is the down side?

If you play pool, then you know the importance of position so consider this “the set up shot” The next one is “the money shot.”

Now go have some fun marketing your business!!

Kill The Assumption Makers

I have spent some time this week working with clients via my "eyeball to eyeball service"  Its either a phone conference or skype meeting for an hour or two per week and its working pretty well.  That's not the point of this blog. Selling you something never has been.  The point is: everywhere I turn, new clients are telling me, emailing me, skyping me that their open play, to be blunt, "just sucks" and in fact "there is no predictability to it."  In some instances, rainy Saturday nights are worse than cool calm and clear Saturday nights.

What gives?

If we tear apart some old assumptions (which I love to do as you know) maybe we can find the answers.

Assumption #1:  "Warmer weather kills open play and with all the competition out there and things to do, people don't want to go indoors."
Really, what about movies, eating out inside and playing video games, watching Netflix movies.  So there goes that assumption. If people are willing to stay indoors, then why won't they go bowling in the summer? Answer:  Because they don't know about your offers and they have other choices. Why aren't you a choice?


Assumption#2:  "No matter how you price it, you cant give it away in the summer."
Really? The Kids Bowl Free Movement proved that isn't true. With more than 1.3 million Moms signing up over $1.8 million kids, almost 1,000 bowling proprietors will tell you that just isn't the case.  So there goes that assumption.


Assumption#3 "Summer bowlers are basically winter bowlers and they just can't afford it."
Really?  Its been shown that if you offer OPEN play bowlers the opportunity to bowl in 6 or 8 or 10 week programs and get them a  bowling ball in the process, you will be able to convert a fair percentage of them IMMEDIATELY to another 6,8 or 10 week session.  So there goes that assumption.

Assumption#4  "Customers only want cheap pricing. That's the only way they will bowl."
Really? Then why is open play down given all the low pricing out there?  Reality is IF NOBODY knows what you are offering, who is going to take advantage of your offer. And if you think you can do it just on email alone, you are dead wrong. Less than 15% of all emails are opened. And with over 250 billion emails being sent a day, 200 billion are found to be spam.  And did you know that GM just pulled out of Facebook and pulled back $10 million dollars worth of advertising to put it on cable TV?  How long will you remain invisible and still blame "the product"?  So there goes that assumption.

Assumption #5  "People will only bowl in the summer when it rains."
Really?  Then how come company parties and fund raisers can be big in the summer if you go after them with themes like "indoor picnics", donating $X of the center's money towards a fund raiser or marketing  family reunion parties or camp/field trip parties? So there goes that assumption.

Tear the assumptions down. Build new paradigms for your center.  Test new ideas. Look at other entertainment industries; what are they doing to promote their business? Go get a blank sheet of paper. Start now. Please.

The New Labels

Marketing practice forces us to create labels; to classify people into what we commonly call "segments." Segments have been defined either demographically (population, households, age, income, marital status, occupation, housing, etc.)  or psychographically (lifestyle to include shopping habits, travel and vacations, car purchases, financial investments, leisure activities, etc.)

Sometimes we get creative and come up with a "value analysis" that takes all this data, mixes it into a computer and out comes 10 or 12 neat categories that describes and labels all the people in your market and provides key characteristics of each group.  There are several firms that will do this analysis for you. None will tell you how these segments buy your product. None are really worth the money.

We don't need more analysis. What we need is to look at our market, our customers and potential customers in a new way.


We need to look at them in a way that labels them by HOW they USE our product.  If we understand how our customers use and consume our product we can provide them with the personalized benefits they want for the specific product they want.

So here's what I propose we "label" our customers:

1. "The Stars" - Customers who like to bowl and have the time and money to bowl in a traditional 36 week. 
2. "The Rising Stars" - Customers who like to bowl and have the time and money to bowl ONLY in leagues that are 16 weeks or less.
3. "The New Traditionalists" - Customers who like to bowl and have some time and less money and would only bowl in a program of 8 weeks or less.
4. "The Family" - Whether its a single family household, dual income household or single earner household, these people bowl mostly on Saturday and Sundays, mostly when weather is cold, rainy or light snow.  May bowl in your family cosmic bowling program.
5. The Discounter"  Likes to bowl infrequently, maybe 2 to 3 times a year and will ONLY bowl when there is a deal at the time he or she wants to bowl.
6. "The Hipster" - Bowls only when there is music and light shows.  Usually on Friday and Saturday night late night, usually after 10pm.
7. "The Birthday Bowler" - Only bowls when invited to a birthday party, either a child, a teen or an adult.
8.  "The Company Man" - Only bowls when invited to a company or group outing. Maybe bowls with his kid at a family outing

Now the real question is: "Do you have  a marketing plan to attract and retain these "labels".  Because if you don't then you can label all of them "non bowlers".