Food For Thought: What 12 Inches of Flour, Sausage, and Cheese Could Have Gotten You!

Hey all! It’s me, Karl. I know it’s been awhile since my last post here on SMG, but I figured today is as good of a day as any to pick-up right where I left off a few weeks back. Well, that and I fear Li will beat me with a stick if I don’t publish something soon.

So what have I been up to lately? Well, like most people in this industry, I’ve had a lot on my plate… and not just in a work sense. A couple of months ago, my girlfriend and I purchased a home not all that far from where we grew up and currently work. Since then, we’ve both been quite the busy bees touching up the place and adding our own personally style to the house… not to mention many after-work visits to the local Home Depot. All in all, it’s been a real blast and I think we’ve finally reached a point where we can just sit back and enjoy our new home… meaning that I’ll once again have the free-time needed to contribute to this blog on a regular basis.

One of the cool things I’m finding about moving into a new neighborhood is meeting and getting to know the locals. Surprisingly enough our experiences with both, our neighbors and the neighboring businesses, have been pleasant ones. I’ve heard the numerous horror stories about moving into a neighborhood of A-holes, but this was certainly not the case. In fact, being new to the neighborhood, we’ve been receiving specialty coupons and vouchers from many of the local businesses and eateries… and all have been appreciated.

This leads me to my story today. A week ago, we received a voucher in the mail from a local pizzeria, one we hadn’t heard of, which offered us a free medium 1-topping pizza. Freakin’ sweet, right… I mean it’s a free pizza. In addition to the voucher, the pizzeria included a letter, highlighting many of their perks, as well as a menu of their offerings. We were very excited to read that they offered some of the traditional pizzeria foods like wings, bread-sticks, and cheese-sticks, and that their weekend hours allowed them to be open until 3am. I can’t count how many times my friends and I have been piss-drunk and hungry at 1am - 2am in the morning.

Now as an internet marketer, I absolutely love this company’s promotional strategy… which happened to work perfectly. My girlfriend and I were clueless to their business, and because they did all of the leg work of getting our attention and offered up a sweet freebie we were on the phone calling them that very day. A flawless strategy indeed… or was it?

I’d love to finish off this story explaining in great detail how we enjoyed each and every bite of our sausage pizza, but unfortunately that is not an option. You see, as perfect as the company’s marketing strategy was in getting our interest, they had a very serious “converting leads to sales” problem. As it turns out, the pizzeria claimed that their marketing company (who they were no longer paying) continues to send out these vouchers in error, and that they would not be honoring them.

After getting off the phone without any sort of compensation or apologies, I became immediately frustrated for 2 reasons. First, as a consumer, I felt frustrated because I was promised something as simple as a free pizza, and would not be receiving one. Secondly, as a marketer, I felt frustrated because the pizzeria was so blind to what they had going for them, that they just let it (it being my girlfriend and I) pass. This company was just hand-delivered 2 new leads, absolutely free of charge, and with great promise of receiving indefinite future business, but tossed them aside on the account of some unrelated issue regarding their marketing company… well that, and the fact that they couldn’t bear to part with 12 inches of flour, sausage and cheese. What an absolutely STUPID decision.

Now I understand that this whole thing came about over a pizza, but a stupid decision is a stupid decision. This could have easily been any company, online or off, within any industry. And thus, I feel this audience can learn from this.

I’ll leave this post with 2 rules of thumb.

Rule #1: As a company, whenever you decide to offer-up some sort of discount or free voucher for your products and services, be willing and able to see it through to the end. I guarantee you, if you flake out or fall short on following through with your company’s promises; it will be your business, not your marketing company that leaves a sour taste in the mouths of your customers.

Rule #2: Take whatever measures necessary to convert any and all leads / traffic into sales... especially those that are free of charge. Ask almost any business owner and they’ll agree that getting the interest and attention of qualified leads is not an easy task, nor is it cheap. Take advantage of every lead you get. As the saying goes, if life gives you apples, you’d best be making apple juice.