1. Atlanta, GA 918 Index (100 = National Average)Atlanta residents are 9.18 times more likely than the average citizen to redeem coupons.
2. Tampa, FL 522
3. Cincinnati, OH 511
4. Saint Louis, MO 468
5. Minneapolis, MN 351
6. Nashville, TN 308
7. Charlotte, NC 306
8. Cleveland, OH 272
9. Pittsburgh, PA 254
10. Kansas City, MO 254
This weekend I was in San Diego with my wife and she wanted to visit "The Worlds Largest" Bead Store - they offer wholesale discounts to the public. Huge place, well lit and organized, and I was wondering how many beads you'd have to sell monthly to cover the lease on 25,000 s.f.The lottery doesn't hold much appeal to me. I can still remember a business professor using the lottery as a way of explaining decision trees and expected value. We calculated the odds of winning the lottery and multiplied this times the cost of the $1 ticket. In the end, the lottery ticket was worth around 50 cents. Whenever I see people buying lottery tickets in the store, I'm always tempted to give them a 50% better return by taking their dollars and giving them 75 cents for each. However, giving lottery tickets to customers to build relationships, strengthen memorability, and strengthen the potential for future business seems like a winning strategy.
While she was shopping this older guy approaches me and has in his hands a dozen 'quick pick' lottery tickets - all fanned out like a deck of cards. I'm immediately wary of some scam - but his explanation surprised me.
"This week the lottery is drawing for $43 Million and we'd like one of our customers to win it, so please pick one ticket, preferably the winning one."
Then, he adds, "If you win, all we ask is that you have a party here with the employees, they'd love to celebrate your good fortune."
Turns out he owns the place and uses this promotion (and a bunch of others) whenever the mood strikes to liven the place up.
I selected a ticket (wife has custody now) and we talked about it for 30 minutes on the drive home. It left an indelible impression - and I would guess it did the same for every customer that got one. All for $1.00. That fits my current budget and seems easy and original. The thing that set it apart was that he delivered it face to face (something my sales guy could easily do) and now I felt some desire to stay connected.
Photo courtesy of Cosmic_Spanner
Jason Sadler came up with the idea of renting himself for part of his living. No, he's not renting himself in that kind of way. Pay the guy between $1 and $365 and he'll wear your t-shirt for a day. Jason's rental space sells out months in advance.
Jason's not simply wearing your shirt. He makes videos about wearing your shirt for YouTube and Ustream.tv. He's takes pictures wearing your shirt for his blog and Flickr. He posts on this blog and Twitter. He plugs your company in the blog and on his calendar.
Okay, so it's more than wearing your shirt and slouching around the house. Still, why pay someone to wear your shirt? Why not simply give your shirts to customers and prospects? They'll wear them for free.
When my wife was interviewing orthodontists, one of them gave my daughter a t-shirt. While we didn't select the orthodontist who gave Mackenzie the t-shirt, she wore it for several years. This is the equivalent of a homeowner selecting a different air conditioning contractor for a replacement, but allowing you to put a yard sign in the front yard one day a month for the next two years.
T-shirts are inexpensive giveaway items that help market your company. Why not give them away left and right?
By the way, come to the Service Roundtable's hospitality party at Comfortech and pick up one of our famous party t-shirts, while they last. We're also giving away a music CD you won't get anywhere else.
I was reading the Bigger Pockets blog about real estate marketing when I experienced one of those blinding flashes of the obvious. It revolves around the use of marketing on coke cans, though you might call them soda cans or pop cans, depending on where you grew up.
Apparently, a baseball Mom/real estate agent attached a marketing message to soft drink cans and passed them out at ball games, generating leads. And why not? After all, Six Flags has been doing it for years. In fact, whenever I take a group of kids to the amusement park we embark on a quest for the appropriate soft drink cans to get the discount.
Imagine buying soft drinks on sale, printing a discount coupon or promotion on adhesive labels, attaching the labels to soft drink cans with instructions to save the can to get the special offer, and distributing these freely at youth sporting events, outdoor events and carnivals, home and gardens shows, etc.
If you're a Service Roundtable member, you won't have to imagine for long. We'll have something for you to download during the next week.
For those unfamiliar with Twitter, it's a "microblogging" site that was designed to be compatible with the short messaging service (SMS) text messages of cell phones. As a result, Twitter messages are 140 characters or less.
One characteristic of Twitter is "hash tags." These are key words, preceded by the "#" symbol. People interested in following a particular subject, can sort through the myriad of Twitter posts by looking for the hash tag of interest.
Habitat, an upscale UK furniture store decided to jump into Twitter. Great! An overly aggressive marketer with Habitat or working on the company's behalf, noted the popularity of certain hash tags and inserted them into the store's promotional messages.
Let's just say this was a mistake.
Habitat used hash tags related to Apple Computer, its iPhone, the True Blood series, and other popular topics. Worse, the store used tags related to the Iranian election.
The Twitter "community," if community's the right word, responded immediately. Habitat got blasted. So Habitat backed off, deleting the Tweets, and pretended like nothing happened.
The blogger Tiphereth commented on Social Media Today that "The way the @HabitatUK page looks now, is typical of a traditional, push marketing, corporate PR approach. Admit nothing, apologise for nothing, do not engage in conversation, advertise, advertise, advertise. You have to wonder why they’re even bothering being on Twitter in the first place."
The uproar was picked up by a copy of major UK papers, ultimately prompting Habitat to issue an apology.
"The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to," apologized Claire from the head office in London. "This was absolutely not authorized by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again."
In other words, it's the ad agency's fault. Pardon me, but this seems like a non-apology.
Habitat should have followed Tiphereth's advice...
1. Individually @replied everyone who complained to them publicly, and apologized for the spammy behaviour
2. Apologized in public. They could have sent out generic tweets to say sorry for not knowing what they were doing when they hijacked the trending hashtags for their marketing tweets
3. Given Twitter followers a special offer discount voucher that could be redeemed via the web.
4. Asked Twitter followers what kind of information/offers HabitatUK could offer, that would give value and build interest.
5. Its ok to fail. Do it quickly and apologize publicly. People are a lot more forgiving when you admit to your mistakes rather than deny any wrongdoing.
I'm always looking for good ad premiums that are inexpensive and that homeowners will use. Peaden's Robert Wilkos came up with a brilliant way to keep the Peaden name in front up customers. After a happy call, he mails them a shopping bag with the company logo.
Personally, I would never bring my own shopping bag to a store. When I'm handed similar bags at a trade show, I usually leave them in the hotel room. However, as a marketer I can't judge the effectiveness of a promotion based on my preferences and biases.
It seems like every grocery store is selling reusable bags with the store logo. And while I think it's flat out silly to give the store $1 for a reusable bag when the store provides disposable bags for free, I have noticed people using them. Since the stores provide recycle bins for the disposable bags, I wonder if people buy reusable bags because they want to make a statement. If so, there's emotion involved and it's always beneficial to be associated with positive emotions.
Cost
Moreover, the bags are cheap. Depending on the quantity, the cost is around a buck a bag. Look around. You might find even better pricing.
Imprinting
What do you print? Your logo, your website, your phone number, your unique selling proposition, a promotional message, or anything else you want. Since the people who use the bags will handle them weekly, whatever you print will be burnt into the consumer's subconscious.
Usage
You can send the bags to your customers after a happy call or with a satisfaction survey like Peaden. You can also give them out at home shows (though I suspect bags given out at home shows will follow the route of trade show bags). Personally, I would assemble a promotional kit with product and service literature you want to emphasize, insert the literature in the bags, and hand the bag to customers following a service call. One of the pieces of literature should be a note suggesting the consumer use the bag when grocery shopping, followed by verbiage about your company's recycling methods.
(c) 2009 Matt Michel
