Lukas Pleva said
1 year, 4 months ago: Hey folks,
Have a question that I thought I’d run by you all in hopes of getting some input.
Here’s a quick background –
I manage marketing efforts for a small (2 locations) chain of family-owned donut and bagel bakeries. The stores are quite successful. Last year, the readers and editors of a local newspaper voted us as the Best Bagel Shop in the area. We make all of our bagels from scratch and fresh every day — a key point of difference between us and national chains like Dunkin Donuts or Einstein’s.
Long story short, we recently opened a second location in a new city. We’re only a few seconds away from a MAJOR road that everyone who drives to work in the morning has to take (has four lanes of traffic). We’re hoping to use some on-the-ground marketing to get people’s attention and get them to visit our store.Specifically, we’re thinking of hiring someone on a part-time basis to stand on the sidewalk and at intersections close to our store with a BIG sign/arrow pointing to our store. Without sounding pompous, we’ve found that once people try our coffee/bagels/donuts, they ALWAYS come back, which means that our goal is to get them into the store at least once, i.e. spread awareness that we exist.
What I need input on is WHAT the big sign should say. It obviously has to be short (so that people driving by can see it) and compelling (so that they have a reason to turn into the smaller street where we are located). There is a Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts roughly two miles or so down that major street, so we’re hoping to get some of that traffic going into our store before they have a chance to get their breakfast from one of the chains.
We were initially considering advertising some sort of a free offering (e.g. FREE bagel w/ coffee —>) but it seems like there is so much of that out there that consumers largely tune those sort of messages out.
Any thoughts/ideas would be very greatly appreciated 
