Another Idea: Treating People Like Winners
If I owned a restaurant that had those business card drawings for free lunch or whatever, I would just call everyone up that entered each month and tell them that they won. If some marketer had come by and told you that for $10 a head they could make your target consumer feel like they were #1 out of a few hundred people, wouldn’t you jump on it in a second? This is that, but real. Of course, the status-quo may better–where you pretend like you do a drawing each month and really just throw all the cards away. That’s the way to treat your consumer.
Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying, The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is The Enemy, and other books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review to Fast Company. His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as Grammy Award winning musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Don’t be silly, you sell the cards to a direct marketing program. That’s valuable personal data you have their.
(This is what a lot of restaurants do. The “Free Lunch” is funded by someone like a local gym who then markets to all the customers in the area from the business cards.)
Sounds like a good idea initially- but your customers are going to be really fishy if they runinto someone who won the exact same prize that they did. The underlying concept is sound though; win customer loyality by making the customer feel special.
I was 26 years old. It was monday at 5:30 and the restaraunt had 0 customers. I needed 60 bucks. I was waiting tables because I had fucked up and needed money.
Without asking, I grabbed the stack of comment cards of our guests, and called them offering a free appetizer if they came in, and asked for Chris. We were an upscale italian joint.
I made 20 calls, got about 8 people to show up for dinner. All of the checks were over 70 bucks, we gave away the aps. 550 in sales. Total restaraunt sales that night: 1100 bucks. Average sales on a monday night: 7500 bucks.
The manager on duty thought it was a good idea. Not a great one. He was cool though…thought he was doing ME a favor. Word got up to his supervisor. His take: “If I ever contact their customers, I’d find a shoneys to telemarket at.”
Fucking A. We were thanking people for leaving feedback. givng away a $3.00 bit of food.