On occasion, I need to depart from my thoughts on Local Store Marketing and restaurants. Now is such a time…

Most everyone is familiar with the stereotypical used car salesman. The guy who would swindle his mother into buying a car that leaked oil. It’s refreshing to learn that the spirit of those used car salesmen is still alive in cyberspace.

Tonight, I just received a text based email which flew under the radar of my junk filter. The subject line read: ” Top Net Inc”, which is not bad, because it doesn’t mention purchasing gold before its too late, or a new male enhancement drug, or anything like that.

So I view the email and find out that this guy is a millionaire who has a burning desire to reveal all his trade secrets to ME! And the best part is – it’s FREE!!!

BUT- alas, if I don’t move with lightning speed- the opportunity of a lifetime will pass me by like two ships in the night.  Never to return. (Unless I save the email and open it again tomorrow).

Here are some direct quotes out of the email and you will notice I left “Shawn Casey’s” name intact. My fear of reprisal is small, mainly because I don’t believe the author of this is named Shawn Casey…

“Okay, let me catch my breathe while I type this because you’re not going to believe this…First off, thank you so much for taking a minute to read this, my name is Shawn Casey, and I’m a millionaire that was dared to do something insane tonight and tomorrow morning, and if you’re interested in knowing what it is then read below, but you’ll need to hurry because you may only have a few minutes to take advantage of this…”

Wow.

It continues…

As part of an insane marketing test, I’m giving away an in-depth Internet “Business-In-A-Box” to 250 people today. I should be selling this for $497, but…I’m flat out giving it away. Your cost is zero… zip… zilch!

Press here before you become the 251st person:

Shawn, can you insult my intelligence anymore?? And it concludes…

Press here to Grab it quick – right now – before I change my mind…

(Darn, I hit the delete key, I hope he didn’t change his mind.)

In all seriousness, I’m a firm believer that a successful business creates a transaction that results in three wins…

Your Client Wins,

You Win and

Society Wins.

The word is value.

Your number one demographic for restaurant marketing would be children from 6-12 years old, unless you are on an island with all adults!

If you had a treasure chest inside the entrance to your restaurant, there are a couple of things you could do to motivate the children…

1. Monthly Treasure Chest Grand Prize:

You simply keep a jar of keys at the door, one of the keys in the jar opens the treasure chest. When the kids come in, each one gets to reach in- pick a key and tries to unlock the chest. The lucky devil who wins gets a nice prize or selection of prizes. (Have boys and girls prizes available.)

2. Birthday Prize:

If you are collecting childrens birthdays and emails- send a email to let them know they can collect their Birthday Prize out of the treasure chest when they come in to eat their free kids meal (mom and dad must pay). Keep inexpensive prizes in the box, let them unlock it and choose!

Local Store Marketing can be fun!

It can be difficult.

There are absolutely certain personal traits necessary to conduct Local Store Marketing…

You must have a certain level of energy.
You cannot be a hermit, you must enjoy meeting people and creating new partnerships.
You must have the vision to see why you are making this commitment and how big the payoff will be.
You should be a little impatient and desire bigger and better things.

If you cannot commit to some actual legwork and extra effort… Local Store Marketing won’t work for you. Your only chance at moving forward is to hire, barter or bribe someone else who will put out extra effort.

It could be that you are more content with writing checks for advertisements and hoping that they will bring back more than 1 or 2 % return (which is really a 99 or 98% failure rate).

Life is much easier for those who hit the lottery or fall into a huge inheritance but for the other 99.9998 percent of us in the real world, the smart money is on those who go after the brass ring every morning. These are the ones who embrace Local Store Marketing.

These are the survivors in any economy, especially a bad economy.

Never allow yourself to reach a place where you feel comfortable. Comfort is an illusion, keep pressing forward.

One of the biggest requests I receive for our site is to post more Local Store Marketing tactics. Well here’s one that’s timely, since it is directed at younger children and we are in the Back to School season.

Introducing the Frisbee Meal. If you can produce some inxepensive plastic frisbees with your name and number on them, bring out the kids meal inside the frisbee!

The kids get to take home a free frisbee and you WILL get talked about by the kids and the parents.

One of the inherent, implied values of purchasing a franchise location for a new restaurant owner is receiving a marketing system that is functional.

Franchisees don’t purchase a location because they want to develop a marketing strategy from scratch. They assume a lot of the marketing bugs have been worked out by the chain.

Most franchise organizations find themselves managing three marketing silos:

A National Campaign (Branding, Etc)

Co-ops which form intentionally or otherwise

Local Store Marketing

The challenge for the franchisor is to successfully integrate those three silos. Successful organizations orchestrate those three silos and organizations that struggle find that those three silos operate independently and have no idea what the other is doing.

I can tell you first hand, that many franchisees are left to their own devices when it comes to Local Store Marketing. The co-ops do their own thing and corporate has it’s own ideas with regard to National branding and advertising.

The problem, as I see it is that the right hand doesn’t know exactly what the left is doing. Marketing messages can actually go in opposite directions within the same company!

My advice to corporate- isolate what is working in these three silos, eliminate the waste, and then coordinate and orchestrate all three so they are moving in the right direction.