In setting up for the Santa Christmas season for 2009, Santa Walter has 3 main goals: 1) open up more options with company Christmas parties, and 2) work closer to home with less zig-zagging back and forth, and 3) try to maintain the positive word-of-mouth advertising from dozens of satisfied clients. From my college marketing courses, the desire is to use more of the ‘rifle approach’ rather than relying solely on the ’shot-gun approach’ in reaching out for business. Of course, the word-of-mouth is the most effective yet least controllable. Hopefully, by adding spontaneous testimonial statements to the marketing efforts, there probably will be positive results.
Develop Additional Company Parties
Family visits usually span 20 minutes to 40 minutes, while company parties have gone for as much as 4 hours. More company parties may mean fewer events but each being of longer duration. That should help on wear-and-tear during the hectic Christmas season, so company parties are the target. The ‘rifle approach’ means the dreaded “cold-calling”. There are not many people who willingly risks the rejection of calling an unwilling prospect. A debt of gratitude is owing to Colleen Wainwright, the Communicatrix for her Cornell Entrepreneur Network workshop. From that invaluable webinar, I then connected with Ilise Benum, at MarketingMentor.com from whom came Marketing Calendar 2009, her newsletter, podcasts, and more. Once the Santa For Events webpage is refreshed and re-focused (thanks Colleen!), then the contacts begin. It is pretty simple in concept: call and connect with prospects, find out their needs, and ask them to become clients.
Santa Closer to Home
A continuous delima for the past 5 years has been driving 45 minutes to an hour to a Santa appearance, and then driving back, to only return to the same area later in the week. In the past, my goal was to try to manage the geography better, and set aside a geographical focus for a day; however, that has fallen apart every year for the past 3 years. When the client calls, they want to know if you can come on their day and time. Very few of them call first to find out availability and THEN sets their party date and time! So this year, the marketing will focus in my local area for company and private parties. The “shot-gun approach” has its place in tightly focusing and cleaning up the websites, connecting on social networks such as Facebook, and judicious Google ads. The new family visits seem to come from out of the ether somehow. This season I hope to remember to ask the new clients how they found me.
Word-of-mouth Testimonials
Since the main thing I can do to specifically generate word-of-mouth connections is to do my best at meeting the needs of the client, I have instituted a 100% satisfaction guarantee. I will do the appearance for free if the client is not satisfied, within 30 days of the event. Even if they have already paid in full, a refund will be promptly tendered. My years in the hospitality industry convinces me that an unhappy customer is bad news, while a happy one is priceless. One extra step I plan this year is to put out several classified ads (SocialWave, Craig’s list, Kijii, etc) with my 30 second elevator-message that includes the guarantee as well as testimonials.
To the degree that my marketing efforts will pan out for this season my explicit plan is to: 1) open up more options with company Christmas parties, and 2) work closer to home with less zig-zagging back and forth, and 3) try to maintain the positive word-of-mouth advertising from dozens of satisfied clients. More posts are planned to explore these ideas further. Helpful comments and suggestions are always welcome.
The main sponsor of the luncheon was the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas: http://forbsantas.org