Promoting for the ladies

[jbrett]

What do people think about the idea of getting some lolly sweets and putting them in a box with all the clubs details on and then handing them out to groups of girls as they crawl the pubs?

I want ways to promote my club, which are inventive. The club down the road from me gives everyone stickers.

[djhush]

i allways thought pens were a good idea. everyone is allways asking for pens to jot down info, especially takeing down numbers or e-mails of someone in a club! and then hpefully they stick it in their pocket take it home, and then you have your product branding in their house! the only thing is all you can fit on a pen is your logo and webiste\number, i would assume a lolly too, but where are you going to print on the lolly?

[David]

I think that Ink Pens and Match Books are the best for cheap give away promo items.

We have used Hershey Kisses in the past. You give each of your employees a dozen or more Hershey Kisses to start. When ever someone asks for one, your employees say "A Kiss for A Kiss". This is a great customer/employee ice breaker. We try and limit the kisses to the checks on the face. It starts out that way but, by midnight, it seems that anywhere on the body is fair game. Just a word of caution to the guys. "Don't wear light colored pants". It never fails, some women will want to kiss you on the fly and I don't mean the kind that flies through the air. Bright Red lipstick is tough to get out of your pants (Just about as tough as it is to get Bright Red lipstick into your pants. Ha Ha).

In the mix of the Hershey Kisses that we give away, there are a few red, green and gold foil covered ones. These have different meanings. During one promo, if you get a red foil covered one, you get a free shot. If you get a gold covered one, you get your choice of beverage and so on. The next time that we do the promo, the colors have a different meaning like, free cover, an office party for you and five of your work buddies. We never tell the employees what value that the Kisses have. Our DJ's do that throughout the night. This keeps it somewhat interesting and fair.

We don't place any advertising with the Kisses. We have ordered candy bars with our advertising and freebees on the inside of the wrapper. You can also borrow or buy a gum ball machine and place colored gum balls inside. You place a value on each of the colors that are in it. Cover the globe with a clean bar rag so that people can't see what they might get. You can even have your logo or club info printed on some of the larger (one inch) gum balls. Note: This is illegal in some states. It constitutes a lottery and requires a special license.

I hope that I didn't get too far off track.

[Music Man]

I have found the candy bars with custom made wrappers and a discount coupon on the inside to be very successful in getting customers to return again, and they ask for another candy bar. I used chocolate mints, but it's the same idea. I also once saw someone do the hersheys kisses that had a little advertisement on the bottom, it was a little circular sticker. I checked with the company that does my candy, and they can do the stickers on the kisses, and kisses are dirt cheap. You can check them out at www.lovelandfavors.com

[chad6er]

Just a thought...
If a person was to go to a club and they were handing out free chocolate kisses at the door, they would unwrap it, pop it in their mouth, and probably throw the wrapper on the floor. All without even looking at it to see the advert. However, If you were giving out small candy bars with little coupon slips inside, they would at least read the coupon if it fell into their hand. They would probably even stick it in their pocket if it was a coupon worth having.
The candy bars cant be too large though. For obvious reasons.

[Music Man]

the person passing out the kisses or candy bars needs to point out the advertisement, whether it be a wrapper or a little sticker on the bottom of the kiss, so that the customer is made aware of it, keeps it and uses it. And it offers the person an opportunity to welcome the customer if they are arriving, or to say goodbye come again if they are leaving.

[Baudtender]

So you think they may throw away the coupons in the goodies
without looking at them?

We can't have that.

First a couple of creative solutions to this problem, and then
the obligatory mind-numbing strategy thesis on the concept
of "free" and The Only True And Proper Strategy for attracting
female customers. I have a lot of wind tonight, so you might
want to get yourself a fresh drink before reading on.

No, really. And go pee now, while you're at it. Don't say I
didn't warn you.

There are plenty of companies that make "custom fortune
cookies" - use those words as a starting point in a web
search engine and see what I mean. I think you could easily
get down to a reasonable price in bulk, and if you have a
kitchen with a fryer, they're really simple to make yourself
with a simple form/jig and you can do German Chocolate,
Irish Cream, Hazelnut, etc. flavors with ingredients you have
on hand, because, let's face it, real fortune cookies really
don't stand on their own, tastewise. We've made 'em for
several special events and everyone went bonkers for 'em. We
contract with a ladies group at a local church to make 'em for us
now, because they do get to be labor intensive, and those ladies,
if nothing else, are certainly labor intensive. We put in the
"fortunes" ourselves, no sense in getting scolded over buttplug
jokes on Sunday, the way I see it.

No one EVER forgets to look at those slips, so there, you
Hershey Kiss and Lollipop foisters.

Or how about getting a company that prints up those pull-tab
or scratch-off lottery game tickets to make some for you and
each ticket always has a winner (we'll, some better than others.)
As long as there's no consideration (they're given for free and
anyone else can send in a SASE to get a free ticket) and/or have
to answer a stupid question (how many sides does a triangle
have?) then you are almost assuredly clear of gambling
restrictions (check your own state/country laws, dammit. I don't
intend to get caned in Singapore, again.)

But of course, they have to come back next week to claim their
prize. <---- That's my rule of thumb no matter what my contest
prizes are - big, small, cash, whatever - they gotta come back
to collect. In other words, even for something so simple as
"free T-Shift when your frequent visitor card has 5 punches"
what they'd get on redemption is a slip to fill out with their
size and color preference, and a claim slip for them to pick it
up in a week (because it has to be ordered, or the corporate
fiscal comptroller accountant money guy has to approve the
disbursement for a cash prize so that the IRS doesn't come
after the winner, yada..blah...yada.) And then, once they get
their T-shirt, there will be something new and irresistable for
them to invest their time towards, I can assure you, because
the marketing has only just begun.

As you can tell, rather than give the slum (referring to the carny
lingo for cheap trinkets) for free on their way out and hope they
come back, I like to use my promos to make sure that they must
invest return visits to collect the dangling carrot. If you're not
yet, you probably will at some point be competing against folks
that will basically give everything away for free just to attract
female bodies. That's a damned foolish and self-defeating game
to join - instead, why not change the rules? The club that creates
the paradigm shift has the luxury of not playing catch-up and
one-up. Everyone else can only catch up to where they used to
be, without understanding the underlying strategies.

Intellectual excercise. Guys, as a general rule, don't clip coupons.
Call it a dick thing or whatever, but manufacturers simply don't
market coupons to men.

Have you ever known a woman who bought something they
didn't need or want until they had a coupon for it and were so
proud of the "bargain" they got and the "money they saved?"
Have you ever known a woman to brag about the outfit she
bought at the department store for 60% off, and didn't have
the heart to tell her the truth about department store sales?

These stupid examples describe a particular effective marketing
pitch to women. The "thank-you" gift at the end is not
marketing in the strictest sense, but a completion of the
transaction and bears no direct correlation on its own to their
next visit, no matter what you'd like to think.

Rotten luck. Give 'em free booze, give 'em free cover, give 'em
a dozen roses, and yet, the competitors don't seem to have
the simple grasp of dignity and economics to expire gently as
you've planned. Worse, the more you give away for free,
the better they seem to persevere.

Market to their sense of value, rather than yours. If you play the
game by emulating others and by taking creative potshots on
obsolete themes, your sense of what attracts them is probably
so far skewed you don't recognize that they're only choosing
between the lesser of several evils and have no sense of loyalty
when a better free ride comes along.

Speaking of carnivals, there's a good reason why their games
operate on the hook - meaning you keep trading up your prizes
to get bigger ones. Think about it, and ask yourself how you can
relate that principal to your own marketing program. The Free
Drink/Free Cover/Exploitation Contests marketing is just all
wrong-headed and vulnerable and self-destructive.

Market and invest to make your lady customers regulars, rather
than an attraction. A soul that belongs. A part of the playing
field. As necessary and appreciated as your best bartender.
You're not in the sales business, you're not in the entertainment
business, you're in the membership business. <--READ IT AGAIN.

They come wanting to belong, which is the most profound
motivator and, in the same breath, easiest thing in the world
to understand and target your marketing. You don't offer that
opportunity, you don't gesture at your grand property and
say "Here it is - here you go! We spent a trazillion dollars
on our sound/light show alone - you have to appreciate that, for
crying out loud. Now give us your money and reinforce our
brilliance, because to hang with us is obviously an honor and
privelege - don't you dare fail to appreciate our opulence, even
though you're going home to an overpriced 3 room apartment
that you can't afford. Don't you see? If you hang out in a fancy
place we let you into for free, you are respectable by association."

Wrong. Worn Out. Broken. One of the inalienable freedoms of
a working stiff is enjoying a rich turd go broke. You'll have no
friends once the well is dry. Doesn't matter if your earned it or
inherited it, you will not gain longterm customers by gold-plated
urinals alone. They may actually really like you, but they'll still
pee on your Corvette, just as a matter of principal.

I repeat, you don't sit back and offer the opportunity of belonging.
You complete that transaction as a matter of highest priority. Or
you give away free stuff and wonder why they're not beating
down your doors.

Get any given 10 bartenders together and ask them to come up
with a new promo, and, unless you've taught them otherwise,
I'll guarantee that at least 9 will, sooner or later, have something
to do with heavy discounts and giveaways.

Free appeals to everyone - it's the perfect no-brain marketing
strategy, or at least seems so until you find yourself unable to
give things away for free. Free, I'm convinced, destroys perceived
value and brand loyalty. Giving away your profit centers is,
as it turns out, just about the most expensive and least
rewarding marketing strategy you'll ever undertake. And you
can mark my words on that. My promos are designed not just
to attract new business, but to continously recruit, recognize and
reward our regulars. They are MY regulars, they are part of the
property, above and beyond my profit incentive. And if you're
not yet one of my regulars, fair maiden, I'm going to convince you
that you need to become one.

There is, I assure you, a way to make females regulars, rather
than nightly body counts, and THAT'S what cuts your
competitions' throats, and changes the rules. But I'm quite
convinced you can't achieve this by playing the game the way
"everybody does it."

Baudtender

[themusicman]

I buy cups with my logo and club name along with a sort of cupon actually printed on the cup. The cupon says something like half off cover if you bring the cup next time you come. You let them take the cups home when they leave. I have had many people tell me that they decided to come because they were drinking out of that cup and saw the cupon. I got almost no response when I just had the logo and no cupon printed on the cup.

[Andrew]

.... now that's nifty marketing!