Ever had a restaurant marketing idea in the middle of the night only to have it drift off as you snooze? Here is an idea for your marketing campaign and a free online tool to assist you.
I used to work for Steve... He planted the seed: "Why don't we give away something to everyone named John? Or Sue? Or...." The purpose was to create a buzz in the community and get people talking.
For your next restaurant marketing campaign, there is a website that tells you how many people have the same name. First, last and combined names. There are 96 other people with the name Michael Hartzell. I am not as unique as I had hoped
Here is what I found for Michael Hartzell on howmanyofme.com:
This fun software is in reality a restaurant marketing tool.
If you take this idea, levarage the opportunity with Internet, social media and email, someone named 'John' should get your message by word of mouth.
Here is the restaurant marketing idea. (Though it could be used for any type of business.)
- Pick a name out of a hat at random. (or a book of names)
- Find out how many have the name. (i.e. There are 44,526 people named John Smith in the United States.)
- Decide what special offer you will give to every person who has the name. Something awesome enough that it will make their day.
- Give it a time deadline.
- Be sure to have a disclaimer, the fine print, the rules... etc.
- Set up a system to check them off and be sure there are no duplicates. (This might best be done via an email address so it also helps you 'build your list')
- Announce it in social media, email, readerboard, mail, or even the more traditional methods such as mail or radio.
If you don't have a team with excellence or products others rave about, if you are "fine" but not special... the buzz stops here. This is a great to review why it will spread.
Since you can get an idea of the popularity of a name by using the online how many names tool, you will know in advance what a worst case scenario can be.
Pick a more popular name, just a first name.
Go ahead, pick my name for your special offer. (Michael)
Steve Jobs on Marketing:
Disclaimer - There is no perfect software or database. Expectations of 100% accurate names is unrealistic.
