Way to Make Your Product Relevant To Drive Sales - Bakery Leverage Valentine's Day To Drive Sales?

A bakery in Hong Kong offers cake delivery on Valentine's Day to drive sales.  They even made a series of "love" theme cakes for Valentine's Day.  Product development plus marketing working together to creatively use a holiday that used to have no relation to bakery to become relevant.  Points to creativity no matter how effective does this drive sales!

How To Grow Social Media Community With Limited Budget For Small Business? - Just Climb, Hong Kong

I see a lot of questions by Marketers on Digital Marketing discussion board/forum on "how to grow social media community with limited budget for small business?".  There aren a lot of case study on big brands in growing social media community where these brands have marketing budget to "buy" the initial community base, create content, and do larger scale interactive campaigns.  I can't find much example or best practices for small business with limited budget.  

I came across this campaign at a climbing gym in Hong Kong call Just Climb.  This is a perfect example of doing something fun and interactive that your target customers would participate because it is cool, relevant and fun that they will be happy to spread the word among their friends like them (this is viral using your customer to find more target customers).  A little competition with incentive is always the nugget to give a little motivation for people to participate.  Incentive doesn't have to be expensive but it has to be relevant and valuable to your target customers.  How does this tie to growing social media base?  Use social media as a platform to enter the competition!  Give them a way to spread the word.  Once these people find your company/brand cool and fun, they will naturally be a fan.

For Just Climb,

• they joint a few other climbing gyms created a platform call, Climbio, for climbers to share climbing routes.  This is fun and make their customers have more fun climbing problems than what they set in the gym and something to bond climbers online - get them talking so they comes back frequently (=stickiness)

• then, they threw out a competition where anyone can enter a draw once for every 2 videos they post on Climbio, and anyone can get a chance to enter the draw once per 5 routes shared.  Not only does this drive participation on social media and this create content that the community values (=stickiness, interaction, content)

                                                           

• that's not it, to drive people to come to the gym more and get those who already come to the gym but hasn't join they FB, they give out a chance to enter the draw for every time they check in on FB when they come to the gym

•  What about prize?  sponsored equipments, gym pass of participated climbing gyms for 1 month or day passes

Now Climbio has less than 500 likes and Just Climb as about 4500 likes.  Let see how many likes this competition can bring Climbio and Just Climb.

Not-For-Profit & Corporate Joint Campaign: World Vision 30 Hours Famine & Cafe De Coral

Cafe De Coral ran a pretty cool campaign with World Vision 30 Hours Famine this year.  Aside from awareness, consumers can immediately participate.  The program lets consumers pick whether they want to donate a full meal or 1/2 a meal to World Vision for the 30 hours famine that ties in well with the famine theme.  When received the 1/2 meal, a standee with a thank-you note is placed on the food tray that fits 1/2 the meal and the standee to reward the consumer for such choice and publicly recognized them.   

Store level execution was pretty neat as well.  Cafe De Coral put out posters, on-table sticker with QR code to drive people to their website for more info on the campaign, and there's quite a bit of messaging on their daily menu so it is very eye catching.

Cafe De Coral has high coverage.  Giving consumer an easy and rewarding way to participate and support a good cause not only drive participation but awareness as well in a grass root way.  Way to go!

Loyalty Program - What Works, What Doesn't?

I didn't realize how established Starbucks loyalty program in Canada is until I come to HK.  The loyalty programs of the coffee chains like Pacific Coffee and Starbucks HK are still at its infant stage compare to Canada.  Surprisingly, Starbucks didn't roll out the loyalty program model globally.  The programs in HK by these 2 chains doesn't reward frequent customers.  There isn't any incentive to join the Program or engagement programs.  There are so much more these 2 chains can do to drive engagement and repeat purchase utilizing these programs.  The Starbucks store locator app runs separately and has no interaction with the Loyalty Program, which is a missed opportunity.  The loyalty program of the Pacific Coffee is even sadder.  The incentive is to load up on a Pacific Coffee card that can only get discount on 3-4 specific days in a month.  No points, no other membership incentive.  Who would join?  

Coffee buyers from chains usually are repeat customers.  If leverage already loyal customers to be brand ambassadors to do your word of mouth marketing, it will be much more effective than just above the line marketing.

What's so great about the Loyalty Program of Starbucks Canada is that you can earn the level of membership when you reach the threshold of drinks you buy from Starbucks.  Not only does it drives sales but it makes the customers feel special and that they belong to a special group with VIP treatment.  To throw in more immediate incentive to be a member, Starbucks threw in a free drink for every 10 you buy.  Most people getting coffee in the queue I saw in Starbucks is a member.  Here, Starbucks got their customer data as well!  Starbucks also frequently sent relevant emails with deals and new products that I look forward to as member.  I even forward them to my friends and family.  Talk about successful word of mouth.

To my surprise as again, Starbuck China seems to have a more mature loyalty program than HK.  At least from the packaging, display and initial incentive for new comers, it looks like they got the program start off right.  Digital engagement is a big part for any Loyalty Program for most developed APAC markets due to smartphone adoption.  Would be cool to see how Starbucks engage members digitally.  I haven't seen much on Starbucks China Weibo mentioning about loyalty program.  It would be good opportunity to do cross platform marketing to engagement its community and drive them to be members so they can get more customers data to do regional and localize retention marketing campaigns.  China consumers are in for Starbucks not so much for the coffee (well…China is a tea drinking nation after all) but for its hang-out cafe environment and the status/recognition associate with the lifestyle Starbucks goer has. Therefore, nurturing the community in China for Starbucks with a successful and relevant loyalty program is essential for Starbucks.