In a class I just attended called “Creativity and Innovation”, we discussed the many types of ways to brainstorm ideas.
One of the ways of brainstorming ideas is to put yourself into another industry than the one you are currently in and think about your question from their standpoint.
So let’s do this brainstorming activity with the burning question on most of your minds, “How do I make more sales?” and let’s use McDonald’s as our viewpoint.
What does McDonald’s do to attract customers, keep customers and make additional back-end sales?
1 Fast Service Some would disagree with this but in all honesty McDonald’s does create and deliver to you a hamburger faster than at a sit down restaurant. Is your service faster than your competition? Do they offer downloads and you still only offer products via CD-ROM?
2 Same look and feel All of the McDonald’s staff get trained the exact same way, dress the exact same way and the restaurants look the exact same way. The layout might be slightly different but you can walk into any McDonald’s anywhere in the world and know you are in McDonald’s just by looking around.
If your potential customers go from one of your webpages to the next do they know they are still on your site or do they start questioning where they are?
Trust is hard enough to earn on the internet by default. Don’t make it harder for your customers to trust you because you are not presenting them with a consistant look and feel. Don’t let your customers question whether you are as flighty as a person just throwing sales pages on the internet.
3 Kids’ play area/Newspapers McDonald’s uses things like newspapers and children’s play areas to keep people in their restaurant longer. Have you ever tried to get a 4-year-old out of those tubes?
What does this have to do with profits? Simple. The longer you stick around the more likely you are to buy something else. The person who sits and reads the paper for 30 minutes is more likely to go get another breakfast biscuit. The mother who lets her children play for 30 minutes is more likely to buy another order of fries or an apple pie.
What do you have on your site that keeps the customer (or for that matter brings them back). That same paper brings the elderly widower back each morning bright and early. The play area brings parents back because it’s the only inside play area for their kids on a rainy day. If it doesn’t make sense to have free content, polls or other items on your site (because it’s a sales page designed for 1 purpose only – to get sales) then are you capturing email addresses so you can bring the customer back?
4 “Do you want fries with that?” or “Would you like to Super-Size that order? (Up selling) Haven’t we all laughed at one time or another at all the jokes that have been made about “Do you want fries with that?” Of course we have.
But what an incredible marketing strategy. In fact, that simple question was being asked by employees at McDonald’s LONG before anyone thought of the concept of “upselling” customers in many other industries.
That’s right – it’s the classic “upsell” technique. When you sell your customer a product, do you offer them the chance to add something to their order before checking out. I’m not talking about a shopping cart where they can browse and pick out another item.
I mean between the “buy now” action and the “thanks for your order” do you specifically offer the customer another item that fits with the first product they just purchased?
For example, the customer buys a Low Fat recipes ebook. Once they click the Buy button, they should be presented with a page that shows their current purchase with an offer to add a product like a weight management membership site or a Tae-Bo workout product.
You know they are a willing customer, what else can you upsell them?
5 The $1 value menu A new solution that has recently been implemented is the $1 Value Menu. First of all the word Value is certainly a Hypnotic word. It gives you the impression that everything on that list if valuable.
Also the use of $1 is a “direct sales” type advertisement. How can you not want to buy something for $1? Well, guess what? A lot of $1 orders can really add up to a nice hefty profit. I know I ordered our entire meal off the $1 menu during one trip and the total still came to $13 (you figure drink, fries and a burger for 4 people = 12 items).
Many marketers are giving away products just to caputure email addresses. That’s a great plan because the money is certainly in the list. However, I wonder how many of them have tested setting up a $1 value menu, of sorts, where customers can choose any of their items for only $1?
I have a feeling that many of the people grabbing free downloads would easily pick up a minimum of 1 – 3 items off the list. The others you could simply offer a pop-up after the fact to offer them a freebie. Don’t believe this will work? Take a look at how profitable the “Dollar” Stores are. There are at least three different franchise version of that concept!
6 Branding (the golden arches) What’s in a name? Everything! Branding, Branding, Branding.
You need to create a brand for yourself. Something that appears on all of your pages on all of your products, etc. People need to begin associating you with that graphic or tag line.
What if Bill Gates was to leave Microsoft? Wouldn’t the majority of people still associate Bill Gates with Microsoft. He IS Microsoft. Become your company.
Disclaimer: Only do this if you are offering value and quality to the market place. The last thing you want is your name associated with poor quality and terrible service.
7 Teaming up with Entertainment or other Businesses We call them Joint Ventures in the internet marketing world.
McDonald’s has teamed up with Wal-Mart and movie theaters and the entertainment industry. I’m not talking about advertising – I mean partnering.
Wal-Mart let’s McDonald’s set up a small version of their restaurant in the back of the store for the Wal-Mart customers to get something to eat. McDonald’s and Wal-Mart both win with more profits.
Look outside the normal scope. See if there are possible Joint Venture opportunities in other fields that are yet untapped. Look outside your immediate niche and see if your product or service overlaps or touches another niche. And go for it!
8 Special promotions (2 apple pies for a $1) The person who was teaching our Creativity and Innovation class commented that one morning when her husband went to McDonald’s to get breakfast, he came back with 4 apple pies in addition to the normal breakfast items.
She said I was shocked and just had to ask, “Why did you get apple pies for breakfast?” His response, “The lady asked if I wanted 2 apple pies for a $1 and I couldn’t resist – I bought 4.”
Cross-selling! Are apple pies a traditional breakfast food? (I said traditional…) Of course not. But when cross selling your products – always test everything. You never know what the customer is willing to buy and when unless you ask.
9 Happy Meals with toys McDonald’s does a wonderful job of “repackaging” to take advantage of different price levels. You can get hamburgers on the $1 Value Menu. You can get hamburgers in the $2 price range and, yes, you can even get burgers in Happy Meals that include toys.
What’s the difference? Hardly anything. The patties are the same in many cases. The more expensive burgers have 2 patties instead of one. Some have all the fixings and others are just plain – and some even come with toys.
It’s the art of repackaging at its best. If McDonald’s just had a one-price burger on its menu that you could buy, what do you think their profits would look like?
What are you doing to repackage and resell your products. It’s not just a matter of taking an older or outdated product and packaging it with others to produced a “set”. It may mean having a Gold, Silver and Bronze version of the product you are currently offering.
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I’m sure some of you didn’t think we could find more than one or two things McDonald’s did that would even remotely pertain to those in internet marketing. If we can do this with McDonald’s and come up with this many ideas, try other companies and other industries.
Brainstorm, come up with new ideas. There is a proven set of guidelines you must follow to be successful on the internet. The basic function does not change – but how you accomplish it does. The ones who will survive the next evolution of internet marketing success will be those who proactively adapt new innovations to the old proven techniques.
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