Failing Offline - To Instant Success!

6 replies
About a month ago my friend Jerald came to me because he knows I do marketing online.

He had an icecream shop in the main bit of a busy town but was failing badly. He spent about $2000 on new icream and different brand and had no customers. MAybe a trickle, and wanted to know if I had some simple ways to bring in more customers and make money.

We both sat down over a beer or two and tried to come up with ways we could do this.

Here are our ideas that LITERALLY saved his shop!!!!

1) Generate buzz by having hot girls in bikinis with FREE samples of his yummiest icecream to try. When my friend did this his shop sold out 48 hours later. LOL.

2) Be different and ask yourself what gives you an edge, look, feel and create word of mouth.

3) Always and i mean always ask you customers what they want. too many of these shops fail cause they think they know what the customers want, when all they had to do was ask.... or get them to fill out a form for a competition and collect data that way.

Doing these three things will guarentee your success.

Hope this helps.

#failing #instant #offline #success
  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Ben
    These are some really great ideas- especially #1! ;-)

    You should set him up with an SMS Service so that he can build a text message database of customers. Then he can send out mass text messages to drive business in the door, especially if it is slow.

    I have a chain of frozen yogurt shops as a client and they use my SMS Service (which is just a white label program from Avid Mobile) with much success. Specifically for them they are constantly having excess fruit toppings that they have to throw away. Now if there is two hours left in the last day that the fruit topping is good, they will send out a mass text message offer saying that customers will get free fruit topping for the next 2 hours. They always get a last minute rush of customer who come in and pay full price for the yogurt because of the free fruit topping. These are customer that would not have come in otherwise, so it is a win-win!

    Anyway, I always love hearing stories of people's success, so kudo's for your post!

    -Ben
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    • Profile picture of the author midasman09
      Banned
      Reminds me of some of the "CROSS-PROMOTIONS" I've done.

      For example; I had the same thing happen with a small, independent Ice-Cream Parlour.

      Because I've been WELL-KNOWN in all the towns I've lived in the past 30 yrs....and...belong to the local Chambers....biz-owners ask me if I have any 'Promotion Ideas" to help their biz.

      So....I look for "Cross-Connections"....how can THIS business....help OTHER businesses...such that....THEY BOTH WIN!"

      So....I asked the Ice Cream guy if he knew the "average age" and "Sex" of his Average customers.

      Well....he said he didn't know for sure but....he was close to the County CourtHouse and "most" of his customers were young to middle age "Female" secretaries, working at the CourtHouse.

      So...I fugured these "women" were concerned about their "Hair" and "looking nice"....so....I went to the nearest Beauty Salon and asked if they would honor a "Discount Coupon" of "$1 Off ANY Beauty Service"....that the Ice Cream guy would give to each of his "female" customers, when they bought "TWO-Scoops"....rather than 1.

      He agreed and thus started a long-term Cross Promotion where one biz helped another and vice-versa.

      Ohhh...the Beauty Salon gives "Buy 1 Scoop and Get 2nd Free"....coupons to all it's customers. Thus bringing new customers over from local Beauty Salons.

      I "discover" Cross-Promotions almost every day.

      Don Alm....promotion guy
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      • Profile picture of the author philboy uk
        Originally Posted by midasman09 View Post

        Reminds me of some of the "CROSS-PROMOTIONS" I've done.

        For example; I had the same thing happen with a small, independent Ice-Cream Parlour.

        Because I've been WELL-KNOWN in all the towns I've lived in the past 30 yrs....and...belong to the local Chambers....biz-owners ask me if I have any 'Promotion Ideas" to help their biz.

        So....I look for "Cross-Connections"....how can THIS business....help OTHER businesses...such that....THEY BOTH WIN!"

        So....I asked the Ice Cream guy if he knew the "average age" and "Sex" of his Average customers.

        Well....he said he didn't know for sure but....he was close to the County CourtHouse and "most" of his customers were young to middle age "Female" secretaries, working at the CourtHouse.

        So...I fugured these "women" were concerned about their "Hair" and "looking nice"....so....I went to the nearest Beauty Salon and asked if they would honor a "Discount Coupon" of "$1 Off ANY Beauty Service"....that the Ice Cream guy would give to each of his "female" customers, when they bought "TWO-Scoops"....rather than 1.

        He agreed and thus started a long-term Cross Promotion where one biz helped another and vice-versa.

        Ohhh...the Beauty Salon gives "Buy 1 Scoop and Get 2nd Free"....coupons to all it's customers. Thus bringing new customers over from local Beauty Salons.

        I "discover" Cross-Promotions almost every day.

        Don Alm....promotion guy

        If I am ever feeling miserable, I look for a Don Alm comment, it always cheers me up.

        Phil George....bald guy
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  • Profile picture of the author caseyfriday
    That's great advice. I don't know that I would ever open a B&M store, but asking the customers what they want always seems to be something that sounds easy, but store-owners are hesitant to do so.

    Thanks for the post.

    Casey Friday - also a bald guy.
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  • Profile picture of the author RKCastillo
    I think it is always important to give the people what they want as efficiently as possible. I like the idea of doing cross-promotions. There just seem to be so many ways to make money. Thanks for the info.
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  • Profile picture of the author DazedandConfused
    Great idea on the cross promotions Don! It may be a bit of a cliche'
    but it is a win-win&win! I am trying to come up with cross promotion ideas for a music store, a restaurant, and a winery
    the music store sells a lot of ukes - the restaurant has an aloha theme - the winery features a uke club get together "open-mic" any you warrior kamaainas have any ideas?
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