When it comes to pizza business, it’s interesting to see how some marketing ideas and methods get spread around in a particular locale. Also, it’s interesting how the challenging economic environment forces some shops to play in the “gray” area.
Here’s a recent example.
I’m in Ottawa this weekend, where my son is playing in a hockey tournament. It’s 5 PM and we don’t have any more games tonight. So he’s off to the “water park” with the other boys and I’m back in the hotel room, online with my laptop.
20 minutes go by and I hear a sound of a piece of paper being shoved under the room door. I pick it up and see another one lying near by, which apparently got in the room earlier the same way. Both are fliers for the local pizzerias.
Apparently, one of the local operators has figured out a way to boost their pie sales (at least temporarily, until the hotel figures out their game and cracks down on them.) Their marketing approach is simple: They walk into a hotel with a stack of pizza fliers under their jacket and walk around the floors, showing those fliers under the room doors. It’s a speculation but I suspect they look for a sign of the room being occupied (otherwise the manager of the hotel would be dealing with a lot of aggravated maids and would so much more inclined to put an end to this pizza marketing gambit.)
Both fliers are not very good from the copywriting point of view. One looks like a bill of good or a shipping slip, with the menu items listed on the left side and the corresponding prices on the right. The other one is significantly more elaborate and uses full-color graphics of both sides, with pictures of food and tear-off coupons. They will find a place in my “swipe” file but they certainly don’t deserve much attention in this article.
Several thoughts are going through my head right now as I think about this event:
- It’s interesting that I have not seen this “guerrilla” pizza marketing method used in other cities — and I travel a lot.
- It’s also interesting that the two local pizza businesses are engaged in one-upmanship of each other. This goes to show that most restaurants (including pizzerias) plagiarize the marketing methods of their local competition and rarely, if ever, bother to research the tactics successfully employed in other parts of the country or other countries.
- I’m very curious to know if the hotel manager and the concierge are in on that. Alas, there is no simple way to find out, and my first name is not Sherlock. (My guess it’s a “yes” for the concierge and a “no” for the manager who’s probably being kept out of the loop.)
Action is what produces results. The two pizza operators (who will remain nameless) are taking action, and that is admirable.
The only issue here is their method of marketing, which is short-sighted and will produce the results that are short-lived:
- They are targeting hotel guests who are here today and are gone tomorrow, so it’s virtually impossibly to turn them into repeat customers;
- The hotel is eventually going to take a note of this activity and will try to put an end to it (say, by pressing littering charges);
- They are upsetting the hotel management and are closing the door shut on a potentially profitable joint venture opportunity with this hotel.
Very opportunistic on the part of these two pizza businesses. And that may get them in fair bit of trouble and wipe out all the profits they manage to create this way.
These is a smarter and better way to work with local hotels, turning them into your allies and ensuring continuous profits for many years to come. Next time, are going to discuss how to set up a profitable joint venture with hotels and how to do that the right way.
