Crisis marketing in 5 months

In May, I was invited for an interview with the commercial director of a big trust in order to promote a chain of well-known restaurants. After a week i proposed strategies for each of them. They have impressed the owner, therefore, in June, i came to my new job.

My #1 priority was a beer house downtown, wich had been suffering for 6 consecutive months, sales going downward, mostly because of the economic crisis, but also, because a part of clients had moved to other new places.

After just one month, the sales have increased by 11%. In August with another 15%, compared with the previous month, exceeding those of August 2008, the lowest sales month of 2008. In september another raise by 18% and there were no more worries about salaries, or returning credits to banks.

Everything was done with small budgets, mainly as a result of cross promotion or barter deals. This is the big picture of how it worked out.

1. No budget for a brand book? At least i have to chose one of the THREE used logos…
2. The old website was poor. We need a new one, more interactive, with news, offers, menu of products and most important, in order to make people wanting to return and share it to their friends - pictures
3. What about gaining your client’s loyalty? So we have a discount card? Change it into a “Club card”, make spacial offers. In the end, use all the amount of information about your clients. Mail marketing + SMS.
4. People love contest, so why not organizing some?
5. Special events like music concerts, or a joke night, make people talk about you. I’m in.
6. There are many people on the streets. We identify our target clients and offer them a flyer, they can exchange for a free dose of beer at our place. They might come the other day, most often with some friends.
7. Radio campaigns + contests, on barter basis of course.
8. Small investments in online promotion.
9. Active social media activity. Odnoklassniki, Facebook and Twitter.
10. Unexplored cross promotion with other “businesses” from the same Trust .

Unfortunately, there were some interesting projects what were rejected because they assumed some costs, maybe that’s why i get bored. I finished my mission and moved on, accepting another big challenge.