Why hair salons?

I’ll tell you why, because people who work in salons are in the small talk business. As they service their customers they learn to initiate small talk to build rapport and pass the time. Let’s give them something positive to discuss- your restaurant!

To accomplish this- you’re going to need to give some free trial to the owner and their employees, and when they come in to eat – treat them well.

Here’s what you do- Invite the salon owner over to eat, have them bring a guest and spend a few minutes after they eat discussing your intentions. Tell the owner you wish to generate word of mouth and you’re prepared to give each salon employee 2 free meals per month. In return, you simply want them to discuss their experience at your restaurant with their clients. Finally you will supply each salon employee with a 10% discount card to pass along to their clients.

Good luck.

For those of you who are members of our LSM University site, you are fully aware of the power of marketing to kids. (For those of you who aren’t members, I can’t begin to describe how much LSM material you’re missing out on, for only 9 bucks a month.)

Recently, I was speaking to a restaurant owner in Illinois who happened to have a large number of elementary schools within 3 miles of his location. Unfortunately he also had strong competitors within 1 mile of his location, and guess what… they all aggressively promoted free kids meals on certain days by passing out coupons.

After some investigation I found out that 2 of his competitors were offering the same type of coupon every Tuesday night. Kids eat free between 4-9PM. Apparently the restaurant owners were copying each other (very common) and my client wanted to know if he should copy the same tactic since it must be working.

Being the type of guy who likes to zig when everyone else is zagging, I suggested the following approach:

Go to the local sign guy and ask him to make up a large vinyl sign that proclaims the following:

KIDS EAT FREE HERE!*

No coupons needed- ever.

*with each adult purchase

After 3 weeks, this has proven to be one of the most successful campaigns this owner has offered.

Wonder when the competition will catch on?