Does your company have multiple locations, or are you part of a bigger franchise?

I recently had a client with multiple coffee-cart locations needing an inexpensive marketing promotion to get her customers to visit those other locations.

We were looking into custom printed paper coffee cups (or cup sleeves) with scratch-off or pull-off pieces for an “instant win” effect. As you can imagine, this type of promotion is cost-prohibitive and didn’t fit into her marketing budget.

My creative solution was to develop a Scavenger Hunt game using branded printed cards, where a customer has to visit each location, purchase a drink, and find the scavenger item. Here’s a break-down of how we created our game:

1. Decide upon the dates, duration, and rules for running your game. For this client, we chose to run the game during the month of August, starting on the 1st and running through to the end of the month. This worked well for this client because most of her customers are daily visitors and all of her locations are within driving distance of each other.

2. Determine how many items you want on your list and what the prize will be for completing the game. This was easy for this client because she has 7 locations, so we chose 7 items and the prize was a Free Large Drink of the customer’s choice. She normally runs a loyalty program where you get a free drink after buying 10 drinks, so this game provided regular customers with an extra incentive to participate … buy 7 and get 1 free, instead of the typical 10.

3. Find and purchase the actual items for the game. We went to a local dollar-store to find our items. Choosing the items before you print the cards is a smart step so that you can have the items printed on the cards. Just to give you an idea, we found our items in the (summer) toy section and here are the items we chose: 1. A beach ball, 2. A beach pail & shovel, 3. Oversized sunglasses, 4. A small inflatable Palm tree, 5. A pair of kids flippers, 6. A large squirt-gun, and 7. A snorkel mask and hose. We are in San Diego so we are very close to the beach, it was summer-time and the items are not typically found at a coffee cart so they stick-out and are easily identifiable.*

4. Have your game cards designed.* I chose to design her game to fit on a double-sided business card with the game on one side and her branding (logo, locations list and contact info) on the other side. We left a blank space after each item so that an employee could initial it*, verifying that the customer had actually been to each individual location, purchased a drink, and presented their game card … and presumably told the employee what the scavenger item was for that location. Make sure to notate the game rules on the card, or if space doesn’t allow it, then a line reading: “Please visit any location or our website for complete game rules”.

5. Have your cards printed. An important step when having your cards printed is to make sure that the game side gets NO COATING so they can be written or stamped on by the employees.

6. Have the game rules posted at each location and on your website.

7. Start promoting the game at least one week before it’s set to start. This builds anticipation and makes your customers aware of your other locations.

To build greater excitement and get even more participation, you could combine this game with a raffle for a bigger prize at the end of the scavenger game with a name being drawn from all the relinquished game cards.

If you don’t already collect your customer’s email addresses, then this is the perfect opportunity to have them give it to you on their completed game card, which they relinquish to get their free prize. Make sure you design your card with a space for their email address.

*Special Notes:

*Always keep your customer-flow in mind when developing and playing games. We chose to have the items easily identifiable so that customers weren’t standing around the cash register trying to figure out what the item is and thereby blocking other customers.

*An alternative for your game cards is to just have blank spaces where you write in the items and this way you can run the game multiple times with different items, but then you are doing a lot of writing on blank cards … and who wants to write out 7 items 500 to 1000 times?

*An alternative to having employees initial the card (if you have far too many employees at too many locations) is to have each location with it’s own unique small stamp which you can purchase at any major office supply store or special-order online. These stamps are a good investment because they also work well for marking loyalty cards and tracking which locations the customers frequent by the different stamps on their relinquished cards.

1. Five-year carryback on net operating losses. Allows small businesses to offset a net operating loss against income earned in previous years.
2. COBRA premium assistance credit. Allows a tax credit against certain employment taxes paid.
3. Special depreciation allowance. Applied to new property and equipment placed in service during 2009 up to $250,000 in qualified property.

For more information, please read the complete article here.

Here are my personal must-haves for any new website (blogsite) that I develop for clients:

1. WordPress – WordPress is the best option to choose for a blogging platform. It’s easy to install, has lots of themes and plug-ins and can be highly customized for various requirements. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that WordPress  can only be used as a “blog” … there are many creative alternative uses for it.
2. Aweber – Aweber is an auto-responder that allows you to create a partially automatic dialogue with customers. It’s a great tool for instantly acknowledging form submitters that you received their submission and will get back to them, works great for email newsletters, and has wonderful tracking analytics so you can see what is or isn’t working with your email marketing campaigns and offers.
3. A Designer – Yes, I’m a little biased on my recommendation on this third item since I am one myself. A designer can setup your blogsite so that all you have to do is go in and keep it maintained with as little tech-know-how as possible. A designer can also customize the graphics for your blog so that your blogsite doesn’t look “cookie-cutter” and has a unique personality that fits your overall branding position. A designer can also help you choose which features and plug-ins would work best for your particular business blog based on your target audience.

You can learn about the WordPress plug-ins I use in my article: WordPress Blog Design: Plugins

I’m interested to have a dialogue with fellow designers, entrepreneurs and small business owners on this subject.

What other ingredients do you think make for a better business blog?

Then there are those that know they need a website, but think they don’t have the content, effort, or time for maintaining a blog.

For all those entrepreneurs and small business owners out there reading this … you MUST have a website … preferably a blog.

According to current research: 97% of consumers use online media to shop locally and 58% of them use an online coupon at a local merchant … meaning … if you don’t have a web presence, then kiss those potential customers buh-bye, because they will find your competitors who do have a website and go to them for their purchases.

Think of it this way; how many times have you gone online to search for a local business’ days and hours of operation, or just to get a phone number to call and ask a question? How many times have you accessed that same information from a mobile device (like your cell phone) instead of going to the “old-school” resource known as the Yellow Pages? Why turn to the Yellow Pages when all you have to do is a quick Google search from your cell phone?

Also keep in mind that the use of mobile devices to access the internet are projected to continue to rise in the next few years (and those forecasts aren’t taking into consideration the plethora of tablet devices ready to flood the market in 2010/11).

Personally, I don’t think I’ve even looked in a Yellow Pages in the last 3 or 4 years … I use Google and Yelp for all my searching needs.

Why a blog instead of just a website?

Most people don’t realize how easy it is to turn a blog into a full-fledged website. With the use of WordPress, a theme, and some plug-ins, I can create a great looking blogsite that is easy for my clients to update themselves without having to turn to me (and pay me) every time they want a simple addition or change.

Also, most business owners don’t realize that you don’t have to use a blog as a “blog” … there are a multitude of creative ideas on how to use a blog as more than just a blog.

So come on entrepreneurs and small business owners … admit that you need a website!

My entrepreneur and small business clients find all the design-related information to be unnecessary clutter for the majority of them. They prefer the information and ideas of how they can market their business better. Very few of them care about the how and why of design, they would rather have someone else worry about that –> like ME

My designer friends and industry professionals find all the marketing-related information to be unnecessary information for the majority of them. They are much more interested in knowing the how and why of design … and only want to know about marketing if it’s about the design of marketing materials.

So …

Over the next week (hopefully not longer), I will be redesigning Aim It Media to be simpler and more focused on Marketing (with some business).

I am designing a completely new blogsite Creativarty strictly for design-related articles, posts and resources.

I’ve also created a new Twitter profile at Twitter/Creativarty … although I’m not tweeting form it yet, follow me there for all design-related tweets since Twitter/AimItMedia will be used for business and marketing tweets.