“If only I had the funds to advertise…”I probably hear this statement five times a week from various FECs throughout the world. Many of these facilities are start-up companies, but to my surprise, a good number are existing FECs that have been around for many years. Struggles in business transcend age and location. Yet, during these “interesting” economic times, there are six simple ways to market and advertise that can boost revenues at little to no cost to your business.
The Press Release (Top Secret Weapon)
This is probably the easiest and most overlooked form of advertising. Its purpose is to grab the attention of a reporter and show them that you have something worth writing about.
I’ll give you a little story. A few years back, I called the local newspaper on a Tuesday about recently updated equipment at my facility. A nice lady picked up the phone, and I told her who I was and that we had just completely updated our equipment at our play facility. I asked who to talk to about getting an article. She quickly said, “Are you going to be at your facility in the next 15 minutes?” I, of course, said yes, and she responded, “I’ll meet you there,” and hung up.
About ten minutes later, this young and eager journalist came walking through my doors with a camera strung around her neck and her trusty pen and pad of paper. Twenty minutes later, she left my facility with several pages of notes and a dozen or so pictures of our newest equipment.
Our local paper is weekly and comes out on Wednesday. Guess whose article was on the front page of the family and life section? Yours truly’s. All I had to do was pick up the phone, and less than 12 hours later we had a half-page article with several pictures explaining all the great benefits of coming to our center. The total cost was zero, and I can directly attribute thousands of dollars in sales to that one article.
Host a Non-Profit Group
I once had J. J. McClatchy, a prominent business owner in the Sacramento area, as a business professor in college. He made a statement that has followed me to this day: “If you take from the community, you must give back to the community.” The idea is that you need to give back to the place your business calls home. We choose to support local non-profit organizations. Whether you choose a local or national non-profit, make it something you believe in.
Don’t be fooled. You are hosting a non-profit event to raise money and awareness for that organization, but you also have plastered your logo and name alongside those of the non-profit all around your community. You not only get the goodwill points for support, but you have just reminded your customers that you are still in business and that they need to come back.
Another huge benefit to a non-profit night is that you can get hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors through your doors — visitors who may not have come inside your facility had they not wanted to support that organization. Now, put your best foot forward and show them why they need to come back with their family, friends and business associates. Don’t ever miss an opportunity to turn a visitor into a customer.
Don’t Sell Your Product (Develop a Sales Script)
Most FECs and play centers do a poor job of even adequately selling their products and services over the phone and in person (my center has room for improvement as well). However, you shouldn’t sell your products or services; you should sell the benefits of using them.
If you were to buy a BMW M5, my dream car, you wouldn’t do so because of its features: four wheels, four doors and blue color. You would buy it because it’s fast and handles corners as nimble as a cheetah hunting prey through a dense forest; you would buy it for its sleekness, comfort and ability to turn heads everywhere you go. Likewise, sell the benefits of your business, and people will buy!
Most people think they are not a sales person. I beg to differ. If you set up the proper script, anyone can sell your product. This script should highlight the benefits of your product while still including its features. Customers will always want to know what your product entails, but if you polish the presentation to include how those features benefit the customer, they will see more value in your product, and this will lead to more sales. If you don’t know where to start, find a marketing/sales company that can help you identify the benefits of your product and create an easy phone script to allow customers to fully appreciate those benefits.
School Sponsorships
We know that kids love to compete, and they love to be a part of something. Another great way to support your local community is to sponsor a school activity. One of the current methods that many of our FEC customers use is to sponsor the honor roll. For instance, any child that makes the honor roll receives a free play pass to your center. Other ways would be to have the most improved GPA or most improved class receive a free party or passes to your FEC.
Additionally, you could sponsor a children’s drawing contest. You can use your facility’s logo or mascot to have the children color or draw the image freehand. You can have their teachers and administration judge the contest, and the winner of the most colorful, most original, most creative, funniest, etc. drawing will receive a prize from your center. Perhaps even have kids bring their drawings to the FEC to be entered. This gets them in the door, and they will likely play for a while.
Since you will already have contacts and connections with the school, make sure that you are the host of their end-of-year class trips. Give the school a tremendous discount to bring all of their students. This could garner free promotion or advertising space in school newsletters every month. Choose the schools that best fit your target market, and they will return huge dividends.
Email Marketing (No Brainer)
Probably the most inexpensive and effective form of advertising is email marketing. The most common forms are direct emails, coupons and newsletters. I’m a fan of the former two. These are emails sent specifically to customers with the intent to connect and to cause them to act. Usually, these emails revolve around birthdays, event anniversary dates and other variables.
If your party reservation system does not include email marketing capabilities, you can easily set one up using ConstantContact.com or another program. You will obviously need a way of collecting email addresses either through your website or reservation system.
The Come Back (Who doesn’t like free?)
The cost to retain a current customer is a fraction of the cost to generate a brand new customer. If you didn’t know this fact already, it’s probably costing you thousands of dollars. What this means is that your customers are potentially a gold mine of cash. This is not just because they have bought your product in the past but the fact that they are familiar with your product, content with your service and will eventually be ready to purchase again, given the right timeframe or opportunity.
We all know about birthdays and annual events, but what if you could get each customer to visit your center just one more time per year? That is big money. Even a small percentage of return business makes up a large amount of your annual revenue. So why wouldn’t you want those customers back for at least one more encore?
To get this return business, you need to entice your customers. Give them an offer they can’t refuse, that only they can use and a time limit. This seems simple enough, but many centers neglect to ride the wave of positive emotion and TOMA (Top of Mind Awareness) that the customer’s recent visit has created.
I have two proven methods of ways to get them back. The first is an immediate call-back request in the form of a coupon or gift certificate (gift certificates look better and are exactly the same as a coupon, if you word it correctly). Have a birthday child come back to enjoy a complimentary game of laser tag or mini golf and arcade play with tokens. The ultimate cost to you is only the paper and ink to print the gift certificate. The key is that the gift certificate must be used within the next 60 days. That kid is going to bring all of his or her friends to play as well, and you just brought in that many more customers for one more visit. All you had to give away was a “free” game.
The second method is also a call back that’s basically the same except it can be used in conjunction with feedback. You can have a customer fill out an online survey, and once completed you send their gift certificate in the mail or hold it at the front desk. You can also do this with paper surveys, but you should have them bring their survey to redeem it for a free game or tokens.
Don’t be cheap! Make this call back something they just can’t refuse or let pass them up. I would package a free game of laser tag or mini golf plus 25 tokens. You don’t think that child will play all those by himself, do you? Even if he does, you know that they will be buying more tokens, laser tag games or concessions.
This is a win/win situation.
The mixer event wasn’t all work though. Shane Zimmerman, Executive Director of the ILTA, presented Jarett Waite with the Golden Phaser Award for Operator of the Year. Scott Drummond with Party Center Software also turned 31 that night and everyone got to sing Happy Birthday while Scott wore a balloon hat in the shape of 31 (seen left).
