Fredquarters Marketing by Fred Kaplowitz

Marketing to The Elites

2016-04-26T14:16:00.002-04:00

I recently read that “the top 100 CEOs” of major American-owned companies have more wealth than the bottom 25% of all USA households. If I figure correctly, that is approximately 32 million households!!

With this kind of information, I further looked at wealth statistics beyond these 100 individuals and, yes, not only is the 1/10^th of 1% true, but it’s the top 3% to 5% who also have a lot of wealth and the way they use it is in terms of “exclusivity.”

One example of exclusivity marketing is the Norwegian cruise line which has created “The HAVEN,” a ship within a ship. This ship within a ship is an exclusive area for about 275 elite guests who enjoy not only a concierge and 24-hour butler service, but also a private pool, sun deck, and restaurant, creating an oasis free from the “regular crowds” that are elsewhere to be found on the same cruise ship.

According to Norwegian’s CEO, Kevin Sheehan, “it was always the intention of the Haven to be an exclusively designed area, away from the masses and to afford them of the opportunity to be away from the masses.”

Sounds pretty snobby, but not since the gilded age of Teddy Roosevelt and JP Morgan has there been such economic and social stratification that has rigidly separated the classes. Probably not since the Titanic!

With the advent (and success) of many new hybrid centers or BEC’s, the bowling industry has been inching towards more “exclusivity” and the market is reacting. There are many reports of celebrities, sports stars, politicians, business people and others of the elite class are seeking these types of bowling amenities.

But what if you don’t have a boutique or a hybrid or an exclusive area? What do you do?

I think you can offer special amenities, without spending lots of money, such as:

1. A “brand” for the “exclusive” area

2. Valet parking

3. Special plated and catered meals (presentation is everything so if you’re not an F&B specialist, get some help here

4. A separate sound proof screen or sound proof drape to create exclusivity for lanes 1 to 8 or 25 to 32

5. Separate staff to cater to the “elites” drink and food preferences.

6. Bowling shirts they can wear (clean them after every use!!)

7. New socks

8. Private bartender and portable drink station

9. Rewire your sound system so these 8 lanes can get their own music. This might be the most expensive part of the total investment, but worth it

10. Offer options like

a. Private DJ

b. Karaoke

c. MC for crazy bowl contests

d. Other entertainment such as caricaturists or magicians that might be wanted

There is a market, I believe, in every town where certain people want to be able to take advantages of exclusive offers. It’s the “elite” segment and they are out there...and as in JP Morgan’s era, their belief is: “money is no object when it comes to satisfying their wants.”

It’s an opportunity…just needs some of your attention!

Part # 3: The Perfect Facebook Post

2016-04-24T19:26:00.004-04:00

This is the 3^rd and last part of how to create “The perfect Facebook post”

· A Perfect Facebook Post is Part of a Consistent Sharing Strategy

AgoraPulse.com analyzed over 8,000 facebook posts to identify how brands, companies were affected by a drop in “organic” (vs paid reach). They came away with some intriguing stats (more than 70 percent of pages had a 30 percent or more decline in organic reach) and some best practices from the handful of pages that are succeeding.

In particular, they focused on four pages that had found success and the four characteristics that each page had in common:

1.    They target an audience with a strong passion
2.    They publish very good content (at least, very good for their target audience)
3.    They publish very consistently (at least once a day, often more)
4.    They get ALOT of shares (thanks to the 3 points above), and shares are what offers the highest level of “viral” visibility for a page’s content.

Let’s assume you have an audience that is passionate about your page (which is why they became fans, right?). Let’s also assume that you are publishing good content.

What’s the key third ingredient?

Consistency

The successful pages in this study posted at least once a day, creating an expectation among its fans of consistent, quality content. There are several ways of staying on schedule with your Facebook posts; set up a content calendar or sign up for a free scheduler like Buffer. Then start filling your queue with quality content.

· A Perfect Facebook Post Includes a Newsworthy Element (optional)

This last point might not apply to some brands whose content and industry don’t lend itself well to timeliness. Still …If there’s ever a way to slip in a newsworthy angle to your Facebook post, do so.

Facebook’s latest tweaks to its News Feed algorithm give a slight boost to timely, trending topics. We’ve heard feedback that there are some instances where a post from a friend or a Page you are connected to is only interesting at a specific moment, for example when you are both watching the same sports game, or talking about the season premiere of a popular TV show.

Facebook is making this update in two ways:

1. Factoring in trending topics
2. Looking at when people like or comment on a post

The first element is related to Facebook’s “trending” section of the site, which identifies topics and conversations that are popular among users.

The second element factors in the rate at which users are liking or commenting on a post. Facebook currently looks at the total number of likes and comments as a factor in whether or not to display a post in the News Feed. With this latest update, another consideration will be when those likes and comments occur.

So what does your perfect Facebook post look like?

Hopefully, these best practices have given you some ideas on what to test with your Facebook marketing strategy.

·       Do you get more engagement when you share an optimized link or a photo?
·       What is your perfect Facebook character count?
·       Can you get more reach by posting at night and on the weekends?

I’d love to hear how these tests go for you and if you’ve found perfect practices for your Facebook page already. Please do share in the comments!

Something Important To SAY.

2016-04-02T17:22:00.003-04:00

This is a story about a man who, when he was 5 years old, found out that he was different from other children. He discovered that every time he tried to talk because his words wouldn’t come out or if they came out at all, they were in the form of a “stutter” or a “stammer”. He became very sad because many other children made fun of him. His parents took him to speech pathologists, hypnotists, and special classes. Nothing helped.

And the bullying only got worse. The little boy became angry and he got into lots of fights, all through elementary school, junior high school, and high school. It seemed that it was an unusual day when he didn’t end up in the principal’s office; even the principal didn’t understand why the boy was fighting because the little boy, then the preteen and then the teenager couldn’t talk well enough to explain it. Eventually, the boy became very lonely and took to his books, his music, and many sports; (he even became a junior boxer) where he didn’t have to talk.

There were still one or two friends that liked him and didn’t make fun of him, as so many others did, so he was able to socialize a little, but there was always someone who thought his malady was “funny” and made fun of him. Some nights, the boy would go to bed and pray to God that he wouldn’t wake up in the morning so he wouldn’t have to endure another day of feeling “different.”

The teenager went to college and graduate school and noticed something wonderful. Not everyone made fun of him, but would give him a chance to get his words out. Soon the man became more confident and his speech patterns began to change and when he got his first job, his new employer hired him BECAUSE of his speech and how brave he thought he was.

The boy, now a man was able to meet a fine woman, get married, have children and his confidence and career rocketed skyward. The man became a VP of a Fortune 200 company and then, after some years, struck out on his own and formed his own marketing consulting company where he helped many clients to reach their dreams. And he became known as a speechmaker, a seminar giver and an innovative presenter of ideas. "God does have a sense of humor", the boy - now the man - would often SAY.

But that's not the end of the story.

Many years later he became involved with a group called S.A.Y., The Stuttering Asociation for the Young. And now that same boy, who is all grown up, is asking you to support this organization that does so much to help children who stutter.

That little boy grew up to be me. Fred Kaplowitz.

Over 70 million people stutter on a daily basis, including 5% of all children. Young people who stutter often face unimaginable fear and cruelty from a world that doesn’t understand them. Over time, they may recoil from the world, silencing themselves to hide their stutter, embarrassment and shame. Young people who stutter may also feel incredibly isolated and alone, and many face daily ridicule, teasing and bullying.

The Stuttering Association for the Young is a non-profit 501(c)(3) and since 2001, SAY has offered comprehensive, innovative programs that address the physical, social and emotional impacts of stuttering.

For 14 years, so many incredible children have come to our programs in despair. We have been lifted by their courage and have witnessed the transformation that occurs when children who stutter develop the self-confidence, lasting friendships and support they need to express themselves fully and follow their dream.

We believe that every young person who stutters has a voice that matters and it is a voice that deserves to be heard.

When you support SAY, you make anything possible in the life of a child who stutters. You help us continue to offer Camp SAY Summer Camp, Confident Voices After-School & Weekend programs, Speech Therapy, SAY: Storytellers and more, and help ensure that SAY can provide financial aid to families-in-need, so that all children have access to our innovative programming. This year alone, SAY will award more than $400,000 in financial aid and to date, no child has been turned away due to a family’s inability to pay.

Please help me to raise money for this organization that does so much to help kids who stutter; to make sure that, even if they have to deal with the shame, embarrassment and humility of other kids, they’re not alone…and will not have to do as I did, and pray to God every night to take them because they can’t bear it any longer.

If you go to www.SAY.org and hit the donate button. I know you’ll do the right thing.

No matter the dollar amount you give, thank you so much, in advance, for your contribution.

Fred Kaplowitz, President, Kaploe Marketing Group

Will You Fear The Summer?

2016-03-27T14:45:00.004-04:00

Lots of us have had pretty good winters, especially since we were going against last year’s snow days and very cold temps that kept people at home. But now we are faced with summer, a time we all know too well.

Many operators will go back to the drawing board and do the same old thing and get about the same number of league bowlers…or less.

Other operators will institute all new programs, rally the troops and put out tons of “sell, sell, and sell” of email and Facebook posts and get about the same number as last year…maybe more.

Yet there will be others that will examine the past and realize that it’s is a great time for exciting open play programs for kids, families, teens, young adults and even some 40+ types and will rally the alley to focus on these programs as well as have the leagues that are coming back.

And finally there will be some that will take what leagues they can, but really focus on company indoor picnics and fundraisers and do more income. And they will do it with an integrated digital footprint that brings synergy to their social media campaign as well as maybe bringing back some old school media as well.

"Why", you may be saying, "will this strategy work?"
Because of one simple fact.

There are a lot more companies and fundraising organizations out there than there are summer league bowlers. And they are looking for new ways to boost morale or do team building or raise money or rally the troops. A larger potential market always equals a bigger opportunity…if you have the right products. And no doubt you probably do. Or if you do not, you can manufacture new ones just by asking some former corporate and find raising customers what they would want. Call them. It's that easy.

So, what do you want to do this summer?

The Proverbial Fly on the Wall

2016-03-13T22:56:00.004-04:00

“I’d love to be the fly on the wall in that office today,” we may find ourselves sometimes saying, especially when we want to know what someone is thinking, but that knowledge is something we are not privy too or it is something that is too impolitic to ask, so we don’t and just fantasize about that fly.

On the wall. With his ears wide open. Just listening.

We think if we know what someone is talking about that we know what they are thinking.

Unfortunately, what people say, often, doesn’t equate to what they mean.

Better to watch what they actually do then to sit in the office and surmise what they will do.

Please, go watch a kid’s birthday party unfold, today, and let me know what you saw, please.

Six (6) Actions You Can Take Right Now to Increase Revenue in the Very Near Future

2016-03-01T11:42:00.002-05:00

Fall league season still has a few months to go. In some places, there are just six weeks left. With that in mind, what are you planning to do now to increase your business over the next 4 to 6 months?

Here are 6 actions you can take now to enjoy real revenue growth in the future.

1. You know about summer league planning, so I won’t bore you with the details here, just a quick reminder to make sure that you try a few new concepts that are more fun, exponentially different and entertaining, as well as being attractive to new open play bowlers for no more than 8 weeks.

2. Build a Spring Fling Company party program. Send out March 21^st to any company or organization that you have done business with over the past 18 months. Offer a discounted party for just $10 to $15 including bowling, shoe rentals, chips and soft drinks. Use these parties as a way to get new data names an opportunity to sell a “league of your own” or “EOW leagues.”

3. In addition to winding up the season, start to think about your digital media schedule including, but not limited to the following: Easter or Spring break, Summer Weekdays after 9pm, Summer Weekend Days, Kids Bowl Free sign ups as well as family pass sales, Memorial day and 4^th of July BVL Teachers and Students end of year bowling parties, fund-raiser opportunities, Cosmic bowling, New Leagues for Summer, 8 for 8 or 10 for 10 leagues, Summer Birthday party special offers, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day.

4. When will the emails be delivered? How many emails will you send and when? What will your content be? Who is responsible for writing this content? How will you augment your email campaign with Facebook posts, Twitter and Instagram? Will you develop an Excel “marketing Grid with WEEKS across the top and PROGRAMS down the left side

5. Have you contacted local day camps, day care centers, and church youth groups for field trips, group outings and rainy day programs? What is your 1 game or two game prices? What about food options? What about an incentive for coming to the center multiple times? How can you get the parent’s names (of the children) for future retargeting relative to adult child programs?

6. Continually look for “non-traditional” revenue streams such as “Summer Fundraisers” as well as themed program nights like “Saturday Summer Party Nights,” “Summer Weekday Nights”, etc. For each of these themed nights, you have to create VALUE, FUN, and ENTERTAINMENT that is accompanied by a compelling offer to motivate the target to Taking ACTION.

a. One example could be “craft beer Fridays. Every Friday is craft beer night and for $X the customer gets bowling and three “tastes” (2 oz. each or less) of three different craft beers…presented by a local brewery.

b. Another example might be “Baker Buddy Nights”; bowl as a team and win weekly fun prizes like t-shirts, beads, sunglasses, summer flip flops, ball caps, etc. Of course, you build the cost of these products into the price of “the giveaways.”

Two Options for the 21st Century Small(er) Business

2016-02-23T00:07:00.000-05:00

If you own a small(er) business, and most of us do, you have probably managed your business like we all have. Except for managers and mechanics, we hire “industrialized workers”.

That is we hire cogs in the system; people who want to be told what to do, who are hired and trained to obey. These are jobs that get outsourced or people who work cheap. This team needs a manager, a manager patient enough to instruct, teach and measure.

The Downside: Sometimes you, the boss, are also busy getting new business, inventing new products and generally working outside the organization. As a result, you’re hoping that you have built the kind of organization where people will do as they are told, do it on time and do it in a professional, courteous and kindly manner.

Because if you’re not the leader of this type of organization and haven’t built it in such a manner (you inherited it and never bothered to change it), you will be disappointed, over and over.

But there are a couple of other ways to run a “small business.”

One Other Way Is to Look at Employees as “Being Equals”. That is an organization staffed with people who have particular skills, marketing and digital marketing, finance, personnel/training and operations. Now I’m not saying that you need four people for this, but I am saying you have four different functions that need to be covered, perhaps by 3 existing people.

You could say that the Beatles were organized as "Being Equals". To make this happen, each person who takes on the function has to be really talented in that field, gifted and unique; he or she has to feel that his/her function are essential to the ongoing success of the business

The Downside: Sometimes this team of equals may forget that their job is ALSO coordination and communication with other team members and just because each of them have unique skills, becoming a prima donna is a trap that is far too easy for one or some of them to fall into.

The Second Way To Look At Employees Is “Your Merry Band of Men and Women.” This is a group of people with similar goals, perceptions and approaches to business. As a result, you can say to them, “use your best judgement" and they go off and do the right thing. 99% of the time

As a quick sidebar, Nordstrom’s, has this one line in their employee policy manual, “Use Your Best Judgement". They can do that because they hire people who have been screened to match the organization’s goals, approaches and perceptions.

The Downside: This isn’t cheap or easy. You literally have to re-evaluate your whole staff and decide what your goals, approach and perceptions are and who matches or doesn’t match with what you want. If you don’t spend the money to recruit, hire and train, then you will be disappointed when they “use their best judgement.”

The point is: You do have options to organize and manage your business in the 21st century to meet a new set of employee and consumer criteria.

In fact, there are many options.
These are just two of them.

What would you do or want to do?
Let me know, please, and I’ll publish it!

7 Tips for Creating a Functional Email Experience

2016-02-16T19:23:00.000-05:00

Chad White is one of the all-time gurus of email marketing Chad is the Research Director at Litmus and the author of Email Marketing Rules and thousands of articles and posts about email marketing.

His research and commentary have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Advertising Age, Adweek, Fortune, and MarketWatch.

He recently wrote an article entitled called 7 Tips for creating a Functional Email and I wanted to pass on some of his insights as well as a few “KaploeKomments” interwoven in the mix.

Expectations are steadily rising in the inbox, and everyone agrees that sending more relevant messages is the key to staying in subscribers’ good graces. However, “relevance” is often talked about in vague, mystical terms or discussed within the narrow context of company-specific examples.

While relevance is indeed in the eye of the beholder, that doesn’t mean it’s indescribable or immeasurable. Relevance is about fulfilling all four levels of the Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs—that is, creating a subscriber experience that is:

1. Respectful - the bottom tier used to email permission, activate accounts or customers and to set expectations, measured by open rate

2. Functional - can be viewed acriss multiple platforms, measured by number of clicks to site

3. Valuable - for testing, for segmenting, personalization and communicating live content (podcats, webinars, etc.) measured by number of conversions to a sale or a customer

4. Remarkable - for exceptional deals, captivating content, measured by the number of forwards and social shares

Whether you’re meeting each of these needs can be gauged by measuring common email activities: opens, clicks, conversions, and forwards.

Delivering relevant messages is a key to email marketing success. While relevance is typically talked about in terms of targeting and personalization, relevance is much bigger than content and targeting.

The Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs (above), provides a big picture view of relevance and illustrates the need for marketers to create a subscriber experience that is Respectful, Functional, Valuable, and Remarkable.

While marketers must respect their subscribers’ wishes by only emailing to those that have opted-in to receive communications, your emails can’t be valuable or remarkable if they are not first functional.

Functional email experiences are key for your subscribers to easily read and interact with your campaigns. If your emails aren’t functional, you run the serious risk becoming irrelevant to your subscribers.

CREATING A FUNCTIONAL EMAIL EXPERIENCE

Functionality is all about quality assurance. Or put another way, it’s about eliminating friction that can degrade the effectiveness of your messaging, erode the subscriber experience, and ultimately damage your brand image.

To create functional email experiences, ensure that:

1. Your emails display appropriately across mobile, web, and desktop applications that your subscribers primarily use. You can use Litmus’ Email Analytics. to determine where your subscribers are most frequently opening your emails. Then, use Email Previews to verify that your emails are displaying as intended in those email clients.

2. Text is legible, particularly in the uncontrolled lighting environments where mobile rendering often takes place. For example, if you don’t use at least 13 pt. font sizes, Apple will auto-adjust anything under that size, often breaking navigation bars.

3. Links are spaced far enough apart so they can be accurately clicked with a mouse or, more importantly, tapped with a finger.

4. The content is clear and free of errors. Read—and re-read—your emails before sending. Also, it never hurts to have a second or third set of eyes look over it, as it’s more difficult for you to catch errors if you wrote the text.

5. Any special email functionality has a good fallback for when that functionality isn’t supported by a particular email client. Using advanced techniques, like HTML5 or CSS3, should have proper fallbacks in place.

6. The links in your emails take subscribers to the intended destination. You can use Link Check to ensure your links are working, being tracked, and going where you intended.

7. Email landing pages greet subscribers with wording and images from the email so they know they’ve arrived at the right place to continue the interaction.

Creating a functional email experience requires a sustained effort because of the patchwork and non-standardized environment that is today's email inboxes. So what works in Apple Mail may not work in Outlook 365 or Gmail.

The email environment is further complicated by the number of devices that can now read emails—which currently include desktops, laptops, tablets, ebook readers, phablets, smartphones, and the Apple Watch, which recognizes a new version of HTML, watch for a new version ofHTML.

And thanks to the Internet of Things, email reading devices may eventually include your car, refrigerator, toothbrush, and light bulbs. (I’m exaggerating, of course, but time will tell just how much I’m exaggerating.)

You may not understand some of the technical stuff in this article, just understand the concept of functional emails and the need to measure how they are doing. After all, emails are still the choice of communication among 72% of the population. So if you want more information on this or just want to get it done, hand it off to some of your “twentysomethings” or “thirtysomethings”. They get it…and you will too.

Patience. Patience. Patience.

The Essential Elements of "Content" That Effectively Sells Your Product

2016-02-08T14:21:00.002-05:00

1. “Content” is King. Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and engaging information to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined audience with the objective of driving a profitable customer transaction.” That’s the long version.

2. The short version is, “all of the ways we communicate online…Website, Blurbs, Email, Newsletters, and Social."

3. 60% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading their custom content.

4. 70% of consumers prefer to know a company via their articles rather than their advertisements.

5. Google reads your content and based on its findings ranks you higher on its search engine.

6. Your content doesn’t have to mimic William Shakespeare; a paragraph coupled with a picture is enough to get results.

7. You should distribute and communicate information whenever:

a. You have a special event and after the event as well.

b. Launch a coupon special offer (accompanies the lead information article and comes at the middle or end of the information.

c. Volunteer or contribute something to the community.

d. Launch a new “product.”

e. There are many other industry specific or local content ideas that will work as well.

8. Now that you have all that "content", what are you going to do with it? We’re going to address only One Method in this blog. There are at least 5 other ways that we will address in future blogs.

9. Emails. 145 billion emails are sent every day. And email is required for all online activities. Bottom line: email works.

10. Emails let you market to existing customers which is 8X more effective than trying to acquire new ones.

11. 88% of people used an email coupon or discount in the past year.

12. Email still rules direct marketing. When you absolutely need it to be read,(by people who have given you permission to send them information and not by someone whose email you just “happened” to get!) email is the most effective method. It blends the best of direct marketing with the speed and power of online marketing. One click and your message is sent to everyone on your list.

13. When sending an email, the key points are:

a. The subject line The should convince viewers to read the message.

b. Your logo is prominently displayed so everyone who reads it knows it is from your company.

c. A specific call to action (CTA) that asks the person to do something, even if it is to like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter or add you to their Google+ circles or print out the coupon.

d. Beautiful imagery placed at the top of the email. Left, right or center or taking the whole page, it doesn’t matter. Just be sure to have a “professional” image. Please no cartoons, unless you own Disneyland!

Datasource: On-Line Report, Localvox, April 2014, DMA

One mid season league tip guaranteed to get you more sign ups

2016-02-02T19:20:00.000-05:00

We all know how difficult it is, these days, to get new people to join a league, regardless of the length of the season, although shorter is better. You know the reasons. We have spoken of this before.

However, like other decisions we make, we don't mind making a decision, we just don't want to make a bad one.

A bad one is one that costs time, money, status or the "loss" of something that is of value.

To get more sign ups, simply promise a "guarantee." Yup, a guarantee.

"We guarantee that you will have so much fun that, after the first week, if you're not happy we will give you your money back. Guaranteed"

if you're concerned about losing money, think about increasing your 8-week league to 9 weeks or your 12 week league to 13 weeks.

You might even pick up some additional revenue.

After all, not everyone will stop after the first week. In fact, experience tells us that less than 4% will ask for their money back.

In that way, you can look someone in the eye and say, "Susie, why not join the "women bowling with wine program. Try it the first week. If you're not happy, I will refund all of your bowling leagues. What do you have to lose?"

"Nothing", says Susie. "Nothing at all."

5 Questions You Need to Ask About Your Business Today.

2016-01-23T21:42:00.002-05:00

While most of the Northeast is being bombarded with snow, Marie and I were fortunate enough to plan a three-day sojourn to Puerto Rico about 2 months ago, never realizing that we would be missing the snow storm of the century. With more than 25 inches of snow already having already fallen, we are hoping that our flight will be canceled.

Unfortunately, hope is not a strategy and if we wanted to stay longer we should have planned it. Alas, we did not plan for that and will be on a plane tomorrow in the late afternoon or maybe it will get delayed. I suspect the latter.

But where does that leave us. It leaves us with asking some important questions about our business and our plan.

Here are 5 questions to find out if we are planning to do work that matters.

What are you doing that is difficult vs hoping someone will give you an easy solution?
What do people say when they talk about your center? How much time have you spent today building your brand? Does anyone care about your business as much as you do? And if not, why not
What are you trying to change and who are you changing it for. Often, I speak with operators who love the idea we suggested, but freely admit that it may be difficult to control. If control is your mission and not trying to offer more valuable products to your customers and prospects, then why don't you have a job as an auditor somewhere else where you can check and control other people's work as opposed to doing the hard work necessary to be the best?
Can you visualize what that change would be, really see it in your mind's eye and be able to translate your vision to your staff so they can see what the goal is supposed to be?
If you stopped delivering your product, would anybody miss it or would they just pick up and go somewhere else? I'm really asking: Is your product and service combination remarkable, unmistakably different and would it be missed terribly by the people who already patronize your business?

Please answer these questions, if you can, and if you cannot then it certainly is a symptom of other issues; issues that you may not recognize right now, but issues that, over time. will most likely impact your business.

As Larry, the Cable Guy, says: "Get 'Er Done."

What You May Be Hiding.

2016-01-12T11:15:00.000-05:00

Your prospects are hiding in plain sight from you. Even your customers are hiding from you. Know why? Maybe it is because you have not fully committed yourself to the gathering, managing, marketing, and re marketing to people who like your product.

Instead, you are sending out Facebook posts and email posts as if you expected everyone to buy your "sale" item.

Ever wonder how many people open your digital communications? Ever wonder how many people click over to your landing page (What's a landing page, you may ask?. we'll answer that in a minute)

The reality is, if I can be so bold this brisk morning, you may be subconsciously hiding from taking responsibility for the necessary marketing changes you must make because: you don't get it; there's nobody to do it and you need reassurance on how to do it. All viable answers...but not rationale.

You built a business, sweated you're "you know what off" and now you could be avoiding things that you don't have to fear anymore

So don’t avoid it.

Come out of hiding to find those customers and prospects

And look in the hiding places. There right there in plain sight.

p.s. A landing page is a page that the customer lands on after he clicks a link in your email that specifically relates to the topic you are discussing. It doesn’t just take him/her to your website; it takes them to the specific topic

Every Story Can Tell And Sell

2016-01-03T17:27:00.000-05:00

A reader writes about mt last blog pertaining to telling a story. Here's what he had to say:

"Wow Fred. Like you suggested, I put out a Facebook post today telling a story for the first time. I have always done what most people have done just post basically ads of specials and deals. With the story type, I have twice as many shares and likes as usual."

Thanks,
Nick, Cedar Lanes, Weed, CA

It's not unusual. People respond to stories because they are hard-wired for it. Every great movie or play has three acts. In fact, the very first stories our parents told us were nursery rhymes that started with "once upon a time," which set the stage for the story, introduced the main characters and began to establish the "tensions", which was the basis for the story.

In Act II, the tension built and one or all of the main characters was in danger or was feeling very conflicted or hatched a plot to take advantage of another character. (The twists on this basic theme are almost infinite. Just pick up any compendium of short stories and see for yourself.)

In Act III, the hero came to the rescue or a situation was created where the characters in danger were rescued.

Now, can you tell a story about bowling like that? Simply paint a picture of your product about what they are feeling and then translate it into words.

How about this short nursery rhyme you could send your target audience; adding a lot more specifics, of course :-)

Once upon a time, there was a family named Jones. Ms. Jones was a single Mom and her two children, Jimmy and Jenny were 8years old and 6 years old respectively. Both went to the same elementary school, and having to drop off both children at the same school was so very convenient for her, which made MS Jones life a bit easier. After all, her position as an Advertising Executive at BIG CITY Digital Marketing Inc. was stressful enough.

One day Jimmy and Jenny came home from school and told Ms. Jones that they were going to be off tomorrow and that school was closed for a "Teacher Review Day." Looking at her schedule, Ms. Jones saw that she had a very light work day calendar and decided that she would take the day off and spend some time with her children; something she did way too rarely.

She began to think of her options. "We could go to the mall", she thought, "but the kids would get bored too soon". "How about a movie?" she said out loud. "No", she said, "we wouldn't be able to talk at all and I want to spend time with them and talk, not just stare at a movie. They do too much of that already," she said to herself.

Just then Jenny came in and said, "I know Mom, let's go bowling. My friend, Sarah, and her folks are going to the bowling center in Middleville. Let's meet them there." Ms. Jones, wide-eyed, said, "Bowling? I haven't been bowling in years and the last time I went, well..." as her voice trailed off.

"No Mom", said Jenny, "this place is cool. Come on, let's go."

So off went the Jones' family to meet Sarah's family at Middleville Bowling Center and boy was Ms, Jones surprised when she opened the front door of the bowling center. Bright new carpet, lighting, welcoming hosts - who even helped her figure out the automatic scorers - clean restrooms, bowling balls that fit and food that was just oh so tasty. She didn't expect this at all!!! Even the music was crisp and clear and age appropriate. Best of all, she watched as her kids and their friends just laughed and laughed and had a wonderful time.

The best news was that when it came time to pay, it was a whole lot less than she expected and as she walked out the door with each kid in hand, she said to herself, "now that was a great value. I am going to do that again with them. Maybe even have Jimmy's next birthday party there."

"Totally great time, eh kids?", she said to her two children, who just smiled, squeezed her hand in agreement and gave her big hugs.

It was a great day and, and that night as Ms. Jones lay her head on the pillow to go to sleep, she said, "Thank you Middleville Bowl. It was a great time with my kids. I almost forgot how much fun bowling could be."

Now if you wrote a story like this, albeit in a much-shortened version, don't you think your readers would relate to it more, especially if you sent this email to all the women in your database between 25 and 44.

Give it a try and tell a story that sells - without selling - and don't forget to add a coupon at the end as well to spur their interest to take action.

The End.

Ten "Evolutions" for 2016

2015-12-31T13:53:00.002-05:00

This is my last post for the year 2015 and my first post of 2016. As many of you know, I started this blog in 2009 and have written well over 500 blogs. Some 1200 subscribers now read it. And I am so grateful for it.

However; the past several months have found me fighting a battle with a chronic back injury which has taken my game down a notch or two and found me spending less time writing and more time "writhing." I think I am back now. Some new treatments have been working wonders and I am getting ready to resume my running. (I have permission providing it is on dirt and I don't try to break the 4-minute mile)!

For me, 2016 will be about blogging more on topics that I hope you will find relevant, but will also resonate with you to take action that will help your business to improve lineage, revenue and profits. I'll be blogging about marketing, management, customer service, and of course, a lot more emphasis on E-Marketing processes and tactics. So stay tuned.

Today, I want to write to you about the New Year and the resolutions we make. Only I am calling this "Ten 2016 New Year's Evolutions" for you to consider.
In no particular order, here they are:

Fight mediocrity every day. Regularly refuse to compromise on your values, even when compromise might be the easier way out. Infuse this "beat mediocrity" value into every employee.
You don't need another big idea or magic bullet to make your business grow. You have all the big ideas you need. You just need to execute better, be more specific about your tactics, test different approaches and, of course, have patience. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.
Don't take a program failure as a personal affront. Go back and examine what you did. What did you do right? What do you think went wrong? What did you learn from it? The last point here is the most important one you can discover.
Don't race to the bottom with low pricing strategies. Differentiate yourself via e-marketing, using testimonials, and more importantly, invite reviews from your customers, companies, and fund-raising organizations with whom you have done business. Reviews are even more important than testimonials.
Remember, most people are visually attentive, more than aurally attentive. Use YouTube videos in your emails as frequently as you can. Real people giving real world reviews are more effective than "words."
Don't keep using emails and Facebook posts to "sell, sell and sell." Use social media to be social. Tell stories about funny, memorable and interesting things that happened at the center...and then offer a coupon that relates to the story
Stop complaining that you have "no help" or no one to do what you can do. If that is the real case, then go hire someone to be a good number two. It will always turn out that doing a good job with good employees that share your passion is the single best way to get a chance to do an even better job with more, next time.
The one thing you may be afraid of probably won't happen if you always take the long view. You know as well as I do that the industry is changing. It isn't modernization you need, it's "reimagining" your center to appeal to more types of open play and entertainment type of customers. Start examining your options from boutique lanes to arcades/redemption games to laser tags to better birthday parties for under served segments like teens and adults...not just kids.
Get more involved in your community; more involved in fund-raising that affects the community's goals. Stay involved with the Chamber of Commerce, attend the meetings, take a leadership role and make sure that your center gets the credit it deserves. Do it because you want to, because you have a passion for the cause, not just for the money.
What is a brand? Its something that someone looks for because it means something. It has value and makes the purchaser feel better about buying the branded product rather than a "generic product." Most proprietors think their center is the same as the guy's center down the street. Perhaps it is and that's why the only differentiation you have been doing is to fight the "genericazation" is with price cuts. That's the way it has always been done and I suppose will continue. But this year what can you think of that sets your center apart? This past year, we eliminated shoe rental at one proprietor, recreated his pricing structure, built in the price of shoe rentals into his new pricing and for the last three months, his sales have increased by double digit percentages over the past year. His position is, " Never pay for shoe rentals again." Now you may not like that idea, and that's OK, but what else can you think of? Remember, branding is the new marketing. Discover what your center stands for and communicate it.

And finally, here's wishing you and your family a most happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

You're So Good, You're Boring

2015-11-09T19:26:00.003-05:00

Before getting started on this blog, I wanted to post a few responses from several of my readers to my “Offense vs. Defense” blog of last week. Thought you would be interested in their comments, amongst a dozen others or so.

“Fred, I think this was one of your most educational and articulate posts yet. However, I think you left out one management failing that is a combination of the two. There are many managers who talk about offense and solicit new ideas but never make a decision until they have "more information".

Or, they try a new idea but give it up after a short period of time before it has a chance to be measurable because "it didn't work". In this way, they never have to face the changes in the industry or in the market.

One of the challenges facing the bowling industry is the lack of management training. I would encourage additional future posts that make people think through some of their basic assumptions in their management style. Good work.” Sincerely, Ken Paton

“Fred, OUTSTANDING BLOG!!
This one should be framed! The bowling business is a great one! When we have some group events and corporate parties, we hear the same thing "I forgot how much fun bowling is". You are correct--we need offensive players to create and execute ideas on how to drive traffic! As we used to say at Brunswick..." most everyone loves to bowl---our job is to keep it Top of Mind." Nice work, Fred.”
Regards, Tom Funk

“Fred, GREAT POST AS ALWAYS!

I am so tired of the negative Nancy. While everyone has challenges complaining about them won't change things. We need to take action.

They say league bowling is dead. Our 32-week leagues are up 11% this year. They say even is the new up when it comes to open play. We are up 42% for September and October. They say the chains are killing the snack bar and restaurants inside bowling alleys. We are up 26% for September and October.

Yes, all my employees know about it, celebrated it at our last employee meeting and take pride in it because I let them know they are the main reason for things going so well. Your best investment will always be training. Attend webinars and seminars, take BPAA on-line courses, join Focus on Results, and read blogs like this one...then pass what you learned down to them. Only mushrooms grow in the dark. Keep your staff informed”.
Thanks, Fred, Lew Simms

Here’s The Real Blog for Today

You’re So Good, You’re Boring

I’ve been in your center. It's sparkling clean, systemized, procedurized, customer servicized and predictable as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West.

In fact, you’re so good, so predictable that after going to your center 3 or 4 times, I think I’ll try something different.

Want to know why?

Because your center is utterly boring. Nothing surprises me. Nothing excites me anymore. Your people all have the same smiles, the same predictably canned answers and the oh so familiar, “Thanks for coming –hope to see you soon answers.”

When are you going to get back to being unpredictable? Because the people who set the trends, the people who care are those that live on the edges are drawn to the idiosyncratic nature of a place or product; to its unpredictability, to what can be customized or tweaked…sometimes even the things that might not even work 100%

Anybody remember why you bowled in the Petersen?

Offense vs Defense

2015-10-26T18:55:00.002-04:00

It has often been said, especially in professional football, that “the best defense is a great offense”. Or was it “the best offense is a great defense?”

After 20 years of providing marketing and management consulting services to businesses within the entertainment category as well as other industries, their strategic business approach is either “offense oriented” or “defense-oriented”, based upon the team the leaders, managers or owners have assembled.

Every client says they want more revenue, but in reality, some are actually AFRAID of more revenue. They are the defensive businesses who tend to hire defensive employees. People who are content with the status quo; people who say, “Oh we tried that and it didn’t work.”

People who believe that they are in a “sunset industry” or a "no growth" or "very low growth industry" and, thus, have no motivation to do anything differently...other than to say, "Nothing works anymore." (Including them!!)

Or people who just want to ride it out until they can sell.

Or they hire people who are mere auditors always thinking about theft; that someone is stealing, that they have to micromanage everything and their strategic visions is, “Don’t lose what you have and protect the principle at all costs”. People who say, “I will invest as little as possible to market my business” and are slow, very slow, to embrace dynamic and new internet marketing processes.

Some have even hired internet companies to do this for them and may have even been successful with it, but the center no longer manages or plays in the game…they have hired replacements to play what they believe is “offense.” Yet, when they don’t see immediate returns in 90 days, they fire the company and move even further away from "the offense" culture and dig their heels in even deeper to play “better” defense.

In fact, the worst situation that the defensive company can be in is to hire a bright, intelligent motivated person to develop a new set of programs. And when that employee stays up and burns the midnight creative oil to present proposals with facts and conclusions to owners, managers and other employees, they eventually get, “that won’t work”; “you can’t do that because of blah, blah, blah.”

Eventually and usually before six months that new employee quits, having been frustrated by the defensive players’ fear of risk, finger pointing and blame. While employees are very concerned about any changes, it is usually, the leader, the manager and/or the owner the owner is even more scared than the employees and this attitude just permeates the organization... So they continue to play defense and still don’t understand why their business begins to atrophy.

On the other hand, those companies who are led by the “offensively oriented proprietor, manager or company executive wants all employee input; wants to reward them for new ideas; has established a culture of "teamwork", goal setting, easy to implement processes, and constant training.

In this offensive minded environment, every idea is valuable, is considered and evaluated thoroughly from the perspective of “how can we run this play”? What new resources will we need to make it happen? How quickly can we roll it out in an alpha and then beta test? It is this organization that truly values every employee and accepts new ideas from all.

Unlike the defensive company that says, ah we’ve heard that before, it just won’t work here, the offensive company looks for reasons to make it work, to reward the employee for his /her idea suggestion, recommendation and creativity.

What kind of people do you think they tend to hire? That’s right. The aggressive self-starter who wants to achieve, who wants to be part of a team and who respects everyone on that team

If you find yourself in the former category (defensive), look in the mirror and evaluate yourself first.

Offense or Defense? The choice is yours

The choice is yours. But I know what I would do.

Because Every Voice Matters

2015-10-12T15:16:00.000-04:00

I never ask my blog readers to buy anything, except a couple of times a year I ask for a contribution to a charity that is near and dear to my heart; SAY (Stuttering Association for the Young). As a youngster, and even as an adult, I experienced stuttering first hand. And it made me what I am today.

I am fortunate and blessed to have achieved many of my dreams and that’s why I am so passionate about helping kids who stutter. I know the humiliation, the teasing, the embarrassment, the tears of anger and frustration and the low self-esteem they feel because I felt that too. Like Moses, who had a stutter, he was driven to succeed because of his trials as a child.

In this world, everyone is given obstacles, some more serious and painful than others. Part of our intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth is to use them as motivations and not merely restrictions.

Sometimes the challenges we are given becomes the accomplishments.

So today I am asking that you go to www.say.org/ruddbowling.

See for yourself what SAY does and how you can be a part of our fourth annual bowling benefit just by clicking the donate button. Then use your credit card and donate any amount, $10, $50 or $100 or whatever you feel good about.

And if you’re in the NYC area October 26^th, please join us. Please know that SAY and the entire organization of specialists and volunteers are doing the needed work to help each child who stutters feel like his voice matters and that stuttering cannot and will not cast a pall on his dreams.

“That which limits us can also empower us.” Moses

My heartfelt thanks to you in advance.

Best regards

Fred

www.SAY.ORG is The Stuttering Association for the Young and is a non-profit organization that empowers young people who stutter and inspires the world to treat them with compassion and respect, so they can achieve their dreams.

What's Your Marketing Vision?

2015-10-07T19:36:00.000-04:00

In the days before computer imaging and technology, manufacturing was conducted by subtraction.

That is, a large block or sheet of metal was rolled out and a press or a cutter was used to make it into the precise size the part was specified.

Manufacturers literally “subtracted” pieces of the block or sheet to make the part.

In today’s world, 3D printing technology, it can make a car fender, a computer screen or almost anything else by “adding” the technology to it.

Parts for spacecraft have been done this way for years. I haven’t seen it in person, but some of my friends who are 3D geeks say this is the future that all manufacturing will be done.

If that be the case, then what is to follow? Will we add more to our existing stuff? As proprietors, we have added sweepers, tournaments, 9pn and 8 pin no tap games, and a myriad of other games to the basic 10 pin gam,e?

But how do you know what consumers want?

Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Obviously the Model T was not even a dream in their mind, but it was in Henry’s mind.

So it took old Henry to have a vision, to have a dream and come up with something completely different from the horse to satisfy desires customers didn’t even know they had.

It took a risk. It took perseverance and it took looking into the future.

As bowling slowly morphs into FEC’s then FEC’s will start morphing into something else.

Because as always, THE MARKETING IS THE PRODUCT?

What will that something else be? Is someone already working on that?

Why not you?

Spend some time; sitting and staring time, soon and think about your vision, about how you can manufacture something that just might be the next Model T

What You Can Learn from Volkswagen Today

2015-09-24T13:49:00.002-04:00

No doubt, you have heard about the recent crisis at Volkswagen.

Seems the good folks in Wolfsburg, Germany decided that the emissions standards for their diesel engines weren’t quite right so they fraudulently reported lower emissions and greenhouse gasses than they actually had.

They got caught and the CEO was forced to resign while the largest automobile manufacturer in Europe, VW, with over a 50% market share has just suffered the worst calamity a company can go through; loss of trust in their product.

No doubt this will have far-reaching consequences for the global automotive industry, as well as impacting the European economy, and perhaps the future of the diesel and or gasoline internal combustion engine that has been around since Karl Benz invented it back in 1897.

And it happened because VW forgot the cardinal rule of 21st-century marketing.

“Marketing is no longer just advertising or PR or promotion or even sophisticated digital marketing. If you still conflict and are uncertain about present day marketing, please realize marketing is not all communications, whether old school traditional or sophisticated digital media. But rather:

Marketing IS THE PRODUCT!

Years ago, in the boardroom of the largest family owned bowling center chain worldwide, I said, “Marketing is Everything.." I was greeted by jeers from other department heads who thought I was saying that their “spheres of influence were less relevant than mine.”

Of course, they misunderstood my words; they were, sadly, too myopic to understand that what I was saying was that “the customer sees our centers through his/her eyes...and the product is the marketing."

From the lanes, to the cleanliness of the bathroom, to the service we provide, to the quality of the food and beverage to the lighting of the parking lot, to the parking lot itself, to signage to the quality of house balls and rental shoes and to many other elements they visually and tactically perceive our quality and the value of their experience.

They do all of this processing, analyzing and concluding what our center, and their experience, is or isn't in less than a second. Yikes!

And no amount or kind of advertising or promotion will overcome a bad product. Ever. Can't fake it till you make it anymore. (See VW above!)

So the message for today is to make sure that all of the elements of your “product” are your marketing?

Start with a checklist. What are ALL of the elements of your product? Then rate them from 1 to 10 with 1 being BAD AND 10 being EXCELLENT. Then have your employees rate the elements. Now ask your customers.

No doubt, you will get a very precise feel about your product and then you can start to improve, over time, each and every element…almost assuring that your marketing will be successful!

Whats Possible vs. What's Required

2015-09-12T16:38:00.001-04:00

We are required to make up a fall league bowler flier, brochure, advertisement, etc.

We are required to call back league bowlers.

We are required to host a junior registration day.

We are required to do a traffic driver before Labor Day.

We are required to “come up with new league ideas."

But…

What if it were possible to concentrate on getting new league bowlers vis a vis a league bowler recommending a friend to bowl?

What if it were possible to create a promotional program to get people that used to bowl to come back to your center and join a short season program or to sub for an existing team in a specific league?

What if it were possible to develop a traffic driving program that went viral because all proceeds of the weekend were going to (person in need, charity or non-profit organization?)

Sometimes it’s more important to think about the “what if it were possibles” rather than the same old “requirements.”

Back To School For Us Too

2015-09-08T15:23:00.003-04:00

For millions of American school children, September signals a return to the classrooms, a clean slate, a new beginning and the promise of a brighter year.

For many business people, September also signals the sounds of the holidays to come. They know, as do you, that before you turn around, the season will be here.

If you’re a bowling proprietor or the owner /operator of an FEC, you recognize the importance of capitalizing on Halloween Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa holiday weeks, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Maybe your market celebrates all of these holidays.

Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Point is you have to get your marketing plans together NOW to be able to implement effective income generating programs.

Here’s just a quick game plan of the steps you need to take

1. What did you do the last several years, during these holidays?

2. Were they successful?

3. Can you quantify lineage, revenue, average price per game, revenue per game during these promotional periods. What’s that, you don’t have that kind of information? Then base it on open play revenue

4. Ask your open play bowlers which (ideas you have) programs they might prefer. List your 3 or 4 ideas in a flier format (doesn’t have to be all that pretty) and show them to open play bowler families, kids, Moms, 15 to 34 year olds, HS kids and any college people in your market.

5. Quantify the data and select the program.

6. Here is the hard part.

a. How do you communicate for maximum effectiveness?

b. How do you reach potential customers and existing non-league customers (No, one or two emails will not bring your embryonic idea to life, Sorry. It takes a campaign).

c. How much will you spend? (“As little as possible” is not a viable answer. Every other marketer is doing all they can to maximize the season so tell me again how your flier sitting on the desk, or your two Facebook posts will have them waiting at the doors is going to compete with them again?).

7. How will you train your people for handling and servicing more people? (What about the part time kid you hired from the local high school? Think he really cares? How will you get him or her motivated to satisfy YOUR customers)?

8. What will you during the campaign to add some excitement, instant gratification, and just plain fun to the experience?

9. How will you make sure to try and gather as much new data base names as possible? (Oh Fred, we try, but get so busy. We just don’t have the time!)

a. Maybe hire a part time hostess for the weekends, Larry and make sure she is a happy, bubbly type that can get people to complete a data base.

10. Did you lay down a set of goals up front and are now measuring the results against goal, against expenditure to achieve goal and against last year.

More importantly, please recognize that the myriad ways to communicate has changes. In the past we pushed messages onto consumers.

Today, consumers have a choice to voluntarily accept it or turn it off. How will you make sure that your message gets turned on??

If you have any questions on these steps, we will be happy to assist. Just give us a call at 516 359 4874 or email us at fredkaplowitz@gmail.com

And have a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and Happy Kwanzaa

Stepping over Dollars to Pick Up Dimes

2015-09-03T13:21:00.001-04:00

Recent Facebook posts have depicted many many reflective and spiritual statements and graphics. Some thanked God for being able to get out of bed this morning. Others were thankful that God let them live this far unto their lives. Still others were just happy to have survived a recent life threatening physical tragedy or emotionally painful event.

These very same people, no doubt, have businesses, work for companies or teach, lawyer account for and doctor other people. Do they carry their spirituality to their chosen work lives?

I would like to think the answer is a resounding “Yes.” However; I have seen far fewer Facebook posts about the same thankfulness they show for each other than they might show for their business…and thus their customers.

Because when you have a business, it’s about satisfying the customer, exceeding his or her expectations and, if we recognized this more frequently - almost in a spiritual way - we wouldn’t need the thousands of customer service training classes, remedial training and just common sense training that is so pervasive in the business community today.

Here is a recent example of making it hard to do business.

I was preparing to celebrate my wife’s birthday, a fairly significant number, may I add, and used the “Open Table” on line service. All went smooth until I decided to call the restaurant. I dialed up the noted establishment and spoke to the maître d. I pleasantly asked her if I could bring a cake since my wife’s best friend had been baking birthday cakes for her, lo these many years, for umpteen years and could we continue the tradition.

She answered, "absolutely…not!" I was astounded and asked her to reconsider. She then responded that “we sell birthday cakes for $100 or $10 a slice. Since I was expecting a dozen or so people, I was getting annoyed with her attitude and suggested that I might take my business elsewhere if she didn’t deliver some satisfactory answers.

She simply said, “Fine, should I cancel your reservation?” “Let me speak to the manager”, I said.” “I am the manager", she said. In one swift movement, I hung up the phone and made a reservation somewhere else where, several days later, we were joyously received and I was able to bring my wife's birthday cake to the celebration.

Now how spiritual was this woman in her business? How much did she really care about her customers? How much did she empathize with me? How much did she put herself in my shoes? How much did she really appreciate the fact that I was willing to be her customer and if I had a good time, I would recommend the establishment to my friends. How much did she care about being spiritual and kind in her business? Not at all. She blew off a fairly expensive dinner for 12; revenue her establishment would have received over “a silly policy” issue.

If you think this is a rare occasion, fly 100,000 miles a year with me and find out about the "unfriendly skies." Or try to return a product you bought on line, even if it had a 100% money back guarantee. Good luck finding a phone number or a process to send it back.

These silly policy issues, all too often, put a lot of pressure on front line people to defend the owner's decisions. Intuitively they know that your policies just, "ain't right."

Lots of turnover, recently? Could be a sign that your employees were always playing defense over your unfriendly policies, never getting a chance to do the right thing and deciding to find a better place to earn their wages. Check yourself if you like finding people doing something wrong as opposed to doing something right.

So why do we do these things? Simply because it was marginally better for the owner and not necessarily for the customer. What will happen to their business when loyal customers wake up and realize that, if they can't get from your establishment what they can easily obtain from other establishments, they will eventually choose a competitor's products or services, switch allegiances and never return to your establishment or buy your service again.

Please, please think about if you are doing anything to make it harder for your customer to buy your product or service. Try to be your customer for a few days and see what is making them, perhaps, "not like you as much as they used to." Just look at your sales and see if they have been steadily eroding? Is that a sign of something that you can fix and not "the economy."

Nevertheless, I suspect that the manager with whom I spoke to at the first restaurant, in her private life, might very well be a spiritual and generous soul. Let us hope.

And that’s why I am never going to go to Ninos Restaurant at 1354 1^st Avenue ( 1^st avenue and 72^nd street in NYC.

Sometimes we step over dollars to pick up dimes.

Running To Daylight

2015-07-04T18:34:00.004-04:00

With the July 4^th weekend now over, many of us are still working our centers, hoping for a little rain and some open play bowling gains. Yet, some of us have closed based upon past results. Whichever category you fall, the hard truth is "NOW" starts the “fall league flooring season.”

From here to the start of the season is about 6 to 8 weeks (42 to 56 days); not a lot of time to do all that needs to be done

I’m not going to dwell on all you need to do starting with: (just some examples) but want to talk about some new methods you can think about which have borne fruit in the past:

· calling last season’s league bowlers

· calling secretaries

· contacting dropouts

· holding league meetings

· establishing league benefits

· speaking to summer bowlers

· selling open play summer bowlers

· selling Kids Bowl Fee parents and kids

· making sure you have short season leagues in place

· emailing, Facebook, twitter – the whole social media campaign

· referral programs

· employee incentives

· direct mail

Here are a couple of ideas to think about right now and implement tomorrow:

1. Invite those corporate party people you last saw in December for a FREE awesome August bowling party. Send emails, text messages and then direct mail. And finally call them. You will get lots of food and beverage income plus the opportunity to talk with them about 8 or 10 week or an every other week bowling party league. Remind them that it doesn’t have to be the same people on each team every night.

2. Do a sales blitz against local stores in your market and invite them in on one or two available nights of free bowling from 6pm to midnight. Just bring in their coupon that you delivered or get their email and send it that way. This sets up a selling situation to sell a short have a ball league for 8 or 10 weeks either at 630pm or 930pm depending on their hours. Hit at least 100 stores.

3. Set up a few band nights the last two weekends in August and invite appropriate age demos (that match the band’s music) to come into the center for $5. Bowling is extra. Have a great short season league ready to sell these folks that include music, bowling equipment and maybe tickets to a concert in your home town or close to your town.

4. Host a fund raiser with the animal shelter and use your venue to raise money for the shelter. Advertise this on local radio and or cable TV. Have the animal shelter email their “donors” and let people bring their dogs to the center and host a dog contest OUTSIDE OF THE CENTER. Have a fund raiser league for the animal shelter for 10 to 12 weeks or every other week or even once a month

Keep thinking about new ideas. Because in today’s environment you have to exceed the customer's expectation…every time.

Did You Know?

2015-06-29T14:23:00.000-04:00

1- Did you know that with all the hoopla about the new digital world we live in, people are still spending more time watching Television than they
spend on the internet and most of the time they spend on the internet is...watching television?!?!?

2- Did you know that it is more important to ask an employee "what did you learn" than to find out if he was successful. Focusing on winning, accountability and all that good stuff is certainly important, but it is even more important that you find out what the employee learned while doing her assignment so you can document and share that with other employees.

The Six Essential Questions Every Marketer Needs To Ask

2015-06-20T12:37:00.000-04:00

It’s been more than three months since I last posted any content on “Fredquarters' Marketing” blog.

After having dealt with some physical issues, my only regret now is that I won’t be able to attend Bowl Expo next week in Las Vegas. This will be only the secondone I will have missed in a very long time. I will miss my friends, colleagues and business partners. And you, if you are going.

In any case, I wanted to send you off to BOWL EXPO with some thoughts about Marketing; after all that’s what this blog is about!!

No doubt your business is facing marketing challenges on all fronts; new competition; new kinds of customers with different tastes; different family structures; different payment options; customer service changes and higher expectations; the newer ways of communicating and learning something new every day; what’s a hardworking proprietor to do?

Here Are Six Questions You Have To Answer When Facing Your Marketing Challenge?

1. WHO are you trying to reach? If you say everybody, you better start over and laser focus in on who is going to buy the specific product you want to offer?

2. HOW will this specific group become aware of your product? Nope a flier on the counter or even a few emails and Facebook posts won’t cut it either. You need a battle tested rock solid campaign, ( and we have lots of campaign options we can share with you; just give us a buzz)

3. WHAT story are you telling, spreading or living or are you still selling 99 cent bowling?

4. DOES your story resonate with the world view people have about your center, your bowling products, your food and beverage products or arcade products? What do they want? What do they believe?

5. WHAT is preventing them from taking action? Fear? Not knowing about it? Product doesn’t turn them on enough to take action?

6. WHEN do you expect them to take action? If the answer is now, then why are they saying “later” or “never?” Why? What are they telling their friends?

Have a great BOWL EXPO and please look for two of our newer consultants; Dave Patz and Steve Sempeck.

They will be in the exhibit areas, so please stop by either the KIDS BOWL FREE

BOOTH and ask my partner, Bruce Davis where you can find one of these two Kaploe Consultants

Or stop by the MOBILYTIX BOOTH and speak with Kris Brus, (our newest relationship partner bringing mobile apps to life just for you), about Dave or Steve’s location.