I feel like going on a rant about my other job besides the temporary teaching job I have. They are absolutely failing at the marketing game. Their strategy is to do mailers, and hit up the social media pages, which works fine if you are including it with other things. My fellow employees have talk to kinda of a liaison between management and us and shared our ideas with her and she brought them up at meetings only to be not implemented. The ideas ranged from reaching out to the school district to give teachers discounts, to go to the schools to set up tables during lunch hours. a couple of my ideas included setting up tables at sporting events prior to and during the games such as spring training and minor league baseball season, to outside the beautiful fau stadium before games, or even at fau baseball or basketball games as well. Heck they missed a opportunity during the Boca Bowl and Honda Classic. Reason being is that they said people attending are not their targeted customers, but we do have online shopping and a website. It should be about getting the brand out their.

Its Owl Time does it with radio ads during FAU sporting events, marketing during games, and in flyers around campus such and it works. FAU is doing the same with ads on the websites for the newspapers and going out into the community to reach out, hence the university fair they had on game days at the campus and it was hugely successful.

Thank you for letting me rant. 

What is your company selling?  Some context would be helpful.

organic and natural foods. with a large amount of folks trying to go that route, or with a lot of people with allergies either nuts or milk or etc.... but they are not taking advantage of the opportunites. again ty for letting me rant again.

USMCOWL said

Its Owl Time does it with radio ads during FAU sporting events, marketing during games, and in flyers around campus such and it works.

Posted On: Apr 11th 2015, 9:33 AM #344426

Marketing is very difficult. I am not convinced that what we do works.  Sometimes there are no metrics to know what you do actually works.  You throw a lot of things out there and see what sticks.  Today was a good day for us but for every person who comes in and discovers us, there are tons of potential customers out there who you have no idea how to reach.  

It is not easy. Honestly, word of mouth has meant more to us than most advertising investment. But you just try to saturate the niche market by whatever means you have.  

When you come on here, hopefully you see us. When you go on facebook, hopefully you see us, when you go on twitter hopefully you see us.  Eventually over time you pick up new customers who have seen your "ad" a million times and something finally makes them take action and come in or go to your site.  

It is probably a lot like building an athletic program…baby steps, over & over.  All the while it seems like it should be a lot easier than it really is. There is no magic button.

i know but for some of us at this place that rely on this job, we feel they are not doing a proper job in our opinon.   anyway i was just ranting. ty.

While people attending sporting events not being your target market is debatable, I would agree NOT to market at these events as this is not what they are interested in nor would many take time to seriously consider your product at such an event.

Your target and opportunity is probably better served spending the time working with local, franchise gyms (Gold's/World's/LA Fitness) as you have a better target audience.  I also would consider making a push into The Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and Publix Greenwise.

Just my .02 to get your mind thinking where your leadership is thinking.

fauowl said

Marketing is very difficult. I am not convinced that what we do works.  

I think you guys do as best as can be expected. You're on both FAU sites, you're all over Twitter, and I believe you're on ESPN too. You have unique products, especially topical products, and you provide great service. I'm actually wondering when you're going to need to expand to a bigger location because you seem to have more products than space there!

sigep77 said

While people attending sporting events not being your target market is debatable, I would agree NOT to market at these events as this is not what they are interested in nor would many take time to seriously consider your product at such an event.

Your target and opportunity is probably better served spending the time working with local, franchise gyms (Gold's/World's/LA Fitness) as you have a better target audience.  I also would consider making a push into The Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and Publix Greenwise.

Just my .02 to get your mind thinking where your leadership is thinking.

Posted On: Apr 11th 2015, 11:10 PM #344516

I really like that you're trying to involve your company in FAU athletics USMCOWL but I have to agree with the above from sigep77. Unless you're giving away free samples of food I'm not at all interested in stopping by a table of organic/natural foods at an athletic event. Not about the product per se either; I didn't stop at the other tables in the Acura level either.

When it comes to food, free samples and word-of-mouth are the two things that draw me in. In addition to sigep's suggest about the stores, I would try to get a table at all these random 5K/tough mudder type competitions that are springing up like weeds all over the nation. I feel like that would be an especially good place to push health/fitness products.

I understand guys and thank you. I just need to go on a little rant because they it seems like they are really not attempting anything.

owl2Doc said

 I'm actually wondering when you're going to need to expand to a bigger location because you seem to have more products than space there!

Posted On: Apr 12th 2015, 12:11 AM #344517

We have the ability to make enough stuff to fill a Walmart. Unfortunately, we don't have enough customers necessary to buy all that stuff and justify expansion yet.  It gets better every day.  I think we may have too many different things right now. Sometimes our own products compete against each other.

Owl2doc had the same idea that I was thinking, maybe setting up tables at the tough mudder/color run type events.  They are all over the place and very popular.  I would think that those people may be your target audience.  

Marketing is tough though, especially now with all the different social media aspects.  I work for a small environmental consulting firm and am transitioning from employee to owner.  I am trying to look at the marketing as well as we really have not done any per se in the past.  Word of mouth and referrals are how we get most of the jobs, other than municipality bids.  The consulting part of our job is a little different situation then your product as our clients are mainly developers, so it is more of a networking than advertising issue.  But we do lake and wetland maintenance as well, which I think could benefit more from some advertising.  Right now we are adding some signage to our trucks with our contact info, and updating our website.  We'll see how that goes.  I keep thinking about setting up a facebook for the maintenance part of the company but I honestly still have the attitude of seeing social media as a "toy" and not a tool, which admittedly is wrong.