Trying Something Different
Things to do to make business happen
By Vance Breese
I sold a business to a friend of mine and he still owed me some money. Being a polite person, I didn’t just ask him when he was going to send me the money. I asked him how was business going. He said he was so busy he had everyone working overtime. I asked him what he was doing for future business? Again, he replied that he was so busy; he didn’t have time for that.
Three months later I called him about the money and asked him how business was going and he said that business was terrible and he had to lay some people off. I asked him what he was doing to for future business, and he said he didn’t have the money for marketing or advertising. I eventually received my money.
I love it when there is an expensive business lesson for which I don’t have to pay to learn it. When I owned an engineering job shop, I always tried to spend 30% of my time working on new business. When my friend bought the business he stopped marketing and about six months latter he paid the price. When business fell off he tried to keep everyone on payroll and ran out of money. He felt that without money he couldn’t find more business.
My next business was a small Harley-Davidson dealership in a small agricultural town. Looking back, I went into the business a little cash short and started growing so fast I ran out of money. I had to find ways to promote the business that didn’t cost a lot of money. These are some of the things that worked for me.
We would have a Wednesday night ride to no where in particular. It was billed as a mystery ride. It was never particularly well attended, but everyone talked about it.
We started a newsletter and tried to become the source of information for what was going on in the local motorcycle community. I bought one of my customers a word processing program and he would write about the local happenings and our mystery ride and who went on it. I have found that people love to read their names. We would let the customers know when a new shipment of T-shirts came in and who was doing what in racing out of the shop. We advertised service specials and sale items. There was not a lot of room for literary content. We also talked about the last Sunday of the month shop ride build excitement for the next one.
We started a once a month shop ride. We would try to ride around 150 miles and stop for brunch. Customers really liked it when people pointed at all the Harley-Davidson riders that would show up in some little town. Restaurants loved the business and would treat us special. Participating customers liked to see their name in the newsletter and stories about someone they knew and an experience that they had shared. The ride was typically around 250 miles total and if we had 20 riders that was two 2,500 mile services. I would often have 40 or 50 motorcycles show up. It gave the riders a chance to see what accessories their friends had and check out the latest high performance modification and feel motivated to escalate the horsepower wars. We felt compelled to write about these contests in the newsletter.
An interesting thing would happen at the start of these rides. Men would buy their ladies some accessory and their riding buddies would try to match the gift for their own ladies. At first I wouldn’t believe that people were really so completive, I learned encourage this. The really big items would show up in the newsletter.
We started three annual charity rides. An Muscular Dystrophy Association run, an Elisa Anne Rice Burn camp ride and a Toy Run.
I realize that the MDA run is not available to everyone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t support it and join in promoting it. It is a nice thing to do and if you work at it you can get a lot of free advertising for the ride and your shop.
The customer that wrote the newsletter was a retired fireman. The burn camp was his idea. Young people who get horribly burned often feel very alone with their disfigurement. The burn camp allows them to get together with other people that have had to overcome many of the same challenges. It is a great charity and gave people a lot to talk about. The local news media loved the idea of big-hearted bikers helping little kids. It was particularly well attended.
We also started a toy run. There was already a local toy run in a nearby town. Small town people are proud of their town and we began both supporting and competing with the other toy run. Some of the riders would dress up like Santa Claus and it would always make the front page of the local newspaper and be on the three local TV stations.
We started an annual birthday ride that wasn’t on our birthday because I bought the shop on April fools day. We would try to fit the birthday ride in between the other local events. We would give anyone who showed up on a bike a terrific BBQ lunch and have lots of raffles where people would win things that I had trouble selling. We would get better than 25% of my customer base show up and it typically cost less than three dollars a head. We would take over a local park and everyone would have a great time and we would be the talk of the town for more than a month.
We didn’t want to compete with the other well known local events as we supported these and made a point of promoting and participating in them. We helped facilitate the Victor McLaughlin stunt team coming to town. They would be in the middle of the local Elks Rodeo Parade and everyone in town would be talking about them. They all ride Harleys. We went out of our way to promote all of the Rodeo Queen contestants. The Festival of Lights was part of a Christmas celebration where everything with lights would run up the main street. We would get as many customers to run up the middle of town with their shiny, noisy bikes and we would help a couple of riders put patriotic flags on their bikes. People would cheer as they went by and the participants loved the attention.
We started a motorcycle mechanics class and taught the customers how to do a 2,500-mile service. Our mechanics were concerned that we would lose this profitable business, but just the opposite happened. When people found out how much work went into what they termed an “oil change” they were happy to pay to have it done. We started a separate class for women and would pass around engine parts so that they could learn something about engines. Holding a part in their hands was a lot more interesting than hearing about it or reading about it.
We started an annual swap meet so people could sell their junk and it gave us a great opportunity to sell our junk. People seemed to love to have a reason to hang out with their friends at the shop.
We always had free coffee and on Saturday and on Sunday we would add doughnuts to the fare.
We sponsored a Bowling team and a Girls softball team. We gave a t-shirt to the people who completed the motorcycle safety course. From time to time we would have a Harley-Davidson only motorcycle safety coarse. The customers would pay for it and all we had to do was make sure that enough people showed up.
We helped with the local police D.A.R.E. program.
We sponsored an Esso speedway bike in local speedway races. We sponsored a Harley Sportster in the XL road race class. Many of the customers would ask about how it was going. The sponsorship itself was very inexpensive, but the end result went a long way.
I would bring my Bonneville racing bike to car shows and sell t-shirts. Always there would be people who “didn’t know that there was a Harley shop in town.”
I would like to say a brief word about Yellow page ads. The advertisement should answer the questions, where are you (with a map)? When are you open? What do you sell? People that are passing through need to know these things. Many ads have too much copy and it is not money well spent.
In short we kept the name of the shop out in front of the town and gave our customers something to do with their bikes and a way to see their name and what they were doing in the media. All this was done with less than 1.5% of our gross income.
In short, I have always found a better return on marketing dollars than advertising dollars.