Client's Business is Booming - Here's What I Did

I thought I would post here as an example of what most any of us can do for a local business owner if they simply give us offline marketers a chance and let us help them.

If you are new to offline and don't have one client yet, don't despair, they are out there and they need our help so keep at it.

Here's the story....

I had lunch with the sales manager of a restaurant client of mine today, who just about 1 year ago came on board after I demoed an SMS system (using Twilio) for him and the owner. (I originally sent a letter to them about SMS and the owner called me back about 2 weeks later)

The manager told me business is booming, off the charts, and much higher than they ever imagined. ( I personally witnessed this last Friday when I went there to get take out and I couldn't even find a parking spot!) The Chinese place next door was half full, and my client's place was packed.

Now this place does have great food, but I know that the things I have done for them have made a big difference in their overall marketing, and overall internet presence and as a result has helped sales big time.

Below is a list of the things I have done for them over the last year. (There are a bunch of people in this forum whose WSOs have helped me learn some of this stuff, and a special thanks goes to Chad Wyatt for introducing me to Twilio in April of last year, and subsequently OpenVBX.)

1) I got them set up with an SMS system and helped them begin getting subscribers. They haven't really pushed this as much as they could have over the last year, but have still managed to put together a list of a little over 750 subscribers. The sales manager sends out messages about once every 3 weeks. He "gets it" so about 3 months in I set him up so he could send the messages from his cell phone to the list. Works like a charm.

2) Last fall I took over their website because they were basically getting hosed from the guys that were doing it previously. I converted their existing ASP site to a wordpress site (a guy on Fiverr did a terrific job on that) so I could incorporate some good plugins. When I did this, I included a php mobile site (thanks Kevin Kooch!) with a redirect as well. (G analytics shows they get 30% of visitors to the mobile site very consistently.)

3) I added a reviews page (thanks again to Chad Wyatt again for his terrific plugin!) and also added their facebook fan page onto their site (Thanks Zesh Ali for your WSO on that!)

4) They really wanted to increase their dine-in business, so I originally suggested an email birthday club. The manager at first said he wasn't into that, then later on when someone inquired about it on their Facebook page, he asked if I could incorporate that too. So I did. (Another helpful WSO using Aweber for this - Thanks Peter Beattie!

5) I added the opt in form to the website and also I ran some ads on Facebook targeting people in my town for the birthday club. The response has been terrific, and after only a couple months that list is close to 300 subscribers - so every month people are coming in now to redeem their birthday coupons - dine-in only of course! cha ching!

The manager would now like to have some sort of coupon for first time visitors to come back within a certain amount of time, so I suggested a mobile "redeemable" coupon and he was very interested in that. So I'll be incorporating that very soon as well, probably with a QR code or something.

I think the key is to start with ONE thing.

Had I gone in guns blazing and told them all of these things they could do at one time, they probably would have kicked me out of the place. I started with SMS, but I could have started with the email birthday club too, or maybe even the Facebook page on their site.

So choose ONE thing and show them how it can help increase their business. When that works, suggest another, and another, etc. We know this stuff inside out, but most business owners do not.

This was my longest post ever I think, but hopefully it will provide a good case study for you of the possibilities!