Gina operates a Restaurant and knows that for long- term success of the restaurant, she will have to find a cost effective way to build loyalty between the diners and the restaurant. Gina shells out about some ad dollars and buys a full-page ad in the local newspaper. The ad simply says “Restaurant Survey.” The survey asks questions like:
° How often do you eat out?
° How often do you order delivery?
To convince people to fill out and mail the survey, Gina offers an incentive of $10 gift certificate to people. Her survey works better than she expects. It brings in more than 2,000 responses!
Gina spends time filling out the information in a database. And she then mails out the gift certificates pronto. The people start coming in droves. Even though Gina just sends 2,000 gift certificates, more than double that number of people comes to the restaurant over a few weeks time.
No diner comes in alone!
Gina gets diners to fill in a comments card after the end of their meals. She gets them to give away as much information about themselves as possible. Then markets to them on a regular basis. She turns one-time diners into regular patrons by following up with them.
Seeing the success of this “Restaurant survey,” Gina runs other similar surveys over time. She always tweaks a tests the offer. She finds out that people don’t fill out the surveys if they are promised “20% off your cheque”. Nothing works as good as “$10 gift certificates.” Not even “free desserts” and “free beverages.” So now she sticks with $10 gift certificates.
Action summary:
°
Use “product surveys”. They will allow you to gain valuable information about your target market. Plus, you will build a database of people who fill in the surveys.
° Give an incentive in order to get more people to fill in the surveys.
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Then follow up! Send regular updates to these people. Send them news that would help them. Send them new product developments. Send them good wishes.
° Test your offer. Test your message and the medium. Test the words. You never know what works best until you test.