The Joe’s Café Marketing System – and it works!

[Will Edwards]

Joe's Cafe is a little breakfast/lunch bar in a side street a few miles away from here. You probably have come across exactly the same kind of place in your own home town. They sell drinks and snacks. It’s not a fancy place; just somewhere to get what you need at an honest price.

Some time ago, I got chatting to the owner. He told me they were doing ok. In fact he told me that recently, they had launched a marketing initiative that had almost doubled their sales. As a student of marketing, I was keen to learn more. I encouraged him to tell me more about his campaign; and, as he poured me a cup of the brown stuff we sat down to chat.

He said it was quite simple really. They offered a great deal: you could get a coffee and a scone for £1.50. Now, just in case you don’t know, that is a great deal. But, he said, his problem was that people were just not aware that he was offering such a great deal. If they knew, he said, then they would come; and they would buy.

OK, I thought to myself, so far, so good: so why were people not aware of this great deal? I wanted to know. He told me that it was because of their location. People just did not know they were there. There were other coffee shops on the High Street; and, to be honest, the other shops were more – well – up-market. They did not offer better coffee; in fact - some of them offered decidedly worse – but they were the places that were in people’s minds when they wanted to get a coffee.

The whole thing reminded me of the people I knew who had put up great websites with great offers who were not getting traffic – people also did not know they were there so they were not making sales. Perhaps if I could understand his answer, it might help those people too.

So I asked what they actually did; and this is what he said …

We pay a young lad a few quid to walk up and down the High Street with a board that says: get a cup of coffee and a scone for £1.50 at Joe’s Café. We are in the alley, next to the Police Station.

And that was it!

Effectively, he went where the traffic already was – and simply diverted some of it. How? It’s not complicated: he made a great offer; and he offered exactly what they wanted - there’s a lot in that when you come to think of it.

You may be wondering what this has to do with internet marketing. Well, I have started using the same tactic. It’s simple really isn’t it: just think of all the places you can get your sign in front of your target market; and then hit them with a great offer right there.

That’s the Joe’s Café Marketing System – and it works!

[Pat Ordenes]

nice Will... good story, and good system!
The basics ALWAS work . Always.

[4Highflyers]

Great post, Will.

There's an extra lesson to be reminded of from this too:

At a time when many businesses are cutting back, this is an example of adding an extra employee and making more money...

Effectiveness before efficiency. So watch you don't hold on to those purse strings
at the expense of extra profit!

Thanks, Will.

Best,
Adam

[Will Edwards]

Hi Adam

Yes - didn't think of it that way, but good point you make there!

Will

[Mark Riddle]

When I owned an Ice Cream / Popcorn store in a college town, that has mainly out of the area students during the summer, Many from other countries.

I was against the rules to place flyers in the dorm rooms, if you wanted to advertise to the students you were told to buy ads in the student paper that was distributed to all the dorm rooms and available to anyone to pick up on campus.

Now Students were encouraged to decorate their rooms, and doors with things that reminded them of home, or what the planned on doing when they graduated.

I placed a small ad in the student paper that said that was running a best of the dorm contest.

I would give a free ice cream cone flavor of their choice of my 24 flavors to the all the residents on the floor that showed the best ice cream from home decoration on their door.

I picked a date for the contest and to enter they had to come by the ice cream shoppe and put a photo of their door on my "Best Dorm" board.

In about 2 weeks I had ice cream designs on doors on about every floor of every dorm (which at the time was about 7000 students) and hundreds of entries.

I picked one design from each dorm and gave them all the prize as promised.

What happened was Ice cream was at the top of their mind every day, my store was at the top of the mind, I don't remember now but I gave away a few hundred cones.

Had enough impact that the college banned door contest when the local competition complained.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, the dorms are primarily where freshmen stay, so these new "Fans" were going to be in town for another 3 years ~!

Mark

[MichaelHiles]

Good stuff. Reminds me that whenever we visit New Orleans, many excellent, but "non-marquee" restaurants, actually pay commissioned "criers" to talk people into coming inside for a meal instead of wandering down to Brennan's.

[Justin Mandel]

In what's left of Little Italy in NYC there are Italian accented criers standing as well outside of every Italian restaurant.

With so many tourists walking on the streets and with so many other neighborhoods (like Chinatown) as little as 1 block over these friendly outgoing attention getters surely scoop up side walk traffic and no doubt prevent many a tourist from venturing any further.

Their financial bonus no doubt yields higher bills by adding on plenty of bottles of red wine, and delicious Italian desserts like capucinos with canolis.

[FG]

Hello Will,
Great story with a wonderful insight.


I have always thought the phrase “create traffic” was an odd expression.


Joe apparently knew that he could not “create customers” so he took action on what he could do and that was to “divert customers” to his place.


Floyd

[iw433]

Kinda Zen like.
Hey this forum is starting to look like a family affair!

Bill Edwards
(4) Edwards in here.

[Will Edwards]

Hey Bill - nice to see you - I noticed you in the 101 Warrior book too. In fact, I thought at first they'd printed my name wrong (lol).

Will

[alivedot]

What an interesting story that you could get something relevant! I made my views and insights too taken from your story.