THIS ISSUE INCLUDES: •  What's New? •  Going, Going … Gone! •  Resource Referral •  Lessons Learned •  Tips & Tricks •  Community Leaders •  Member Spotlight •  Community Stats •  Your Account Summary •  Success Story •  Special Thanks •  Last Laugh

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WHAT'S NEW?

Dear Askers & Answerers,

I have some long-awaited news. We're ready to launch MP's brand-new Affiliate Program. Some of you have been asking for this for quite a while. So we're glad to offer it to you. Here's the gist:

Our seminars run $99, and memberships are $49.95 or $199.

Here's where you sign-up:
https://www.marketingprofs.com/aff/

We want to make sure our processes for handling payments and communicating are in place before we take on a large number of Affiliates. So, everyone is welcome to apply. But I will only be accepting 25 applications to be Charter Affiliates, giving priority to our Top 25 KHE Experts, Senior Contributors (writers) and Seminar Presenters. Once we're sure things are working smoothly with this group, I'll begin accepting more applications.

Please let me know if you have questions. I'm looking forward to sending you checks!

Happy exchanging,

Val Frazee
Moderator, Know-How Exchange
MarketingProfs.com

GOING, GOING, GONE!

Here are KHE's 10 oldest questions. They're likely to close soon. Have an idea to offer? Better do it now!

1. Billboard CPM
2. Time spent on administration between phone calls
3. online magazines & loyalty + automotive industry
4. CUSTOMER CALL CENTRE
5. lifestyle store.. launch... any ideas mates?
6. Software for branding research
7. What is a best way to sell a new hotel concept?
8. Launch Projects
9. OB Instruments for Customer Behaviour
10. Can not seem to get a handle on Marketing my GYM

RESOURCE REFERRAL: ACRONYM FINDER

This week's resource referral comes to us from cetty. The site she recommends is Acronym Finder. This is the place to go if you want to find the exact meaning of an acronym. I like the fact that you can either find the meaning of the acronym or do a reverse search to see if there is an acronym for certain keywords. This is the perfect tool for understanding global acronyms that you might not know.
Resource: Acronym Finder

Browse 322 other resources recommended by our members in KHE's Resource Library. Or add one of your own!

LESSONS LEARNED: DRAW A RESTAURANT CROWD

Recently, new member bs44sunshine asked the community for ideas for promoting a new Spanish restaurant in a business district in Boca Raton, Florida. Here are some excerpts from the conversation.

• W.M.M.A.: I've found that a strong direct-mail-couponing type of program works. It must be long-term, not a one- or two-time test of the market. You are asking people to change their habits. This may take a while. ... Once they come in, give them a reason to come back. A free flan or something. And the marketing material must look successful. It must be bright and colorful. ... Recognize the customers who have been there. If they use credit cards, take down their names. Do a neighborhood whitepages check. Keep them on a mailing list of new specials.
• psimone: Take out large, professionally designed ads (not one or two, but a minimum course of 13 weeks) in the top two papers covering the geographic region you'll pull customers from. Have them designed by a bona fide graphic designer, not by a friend or your Uncle Harvey. ... Again the ads, the radio spots - all forms of marketing outreach - need to offer an equation of info: we're open + delectible descriptions of your cuisine + promotion (or call to action) with a limited time offer.
• ejenkins: Partner with a well-known charity and invite them to host an event in your restaurant. You'll be amazed at how many people will attend events for a good cause. Naturally you'll be expected to give X% of your proceeds to the charity. Have an admission price of $40, for example. (Adjust accordingly for how upscale your restaurant is.)
• darcy.moen: Our local school just held a fundraiser at a local restaurant. We brought in 400 customers for one night to a local pub. ... The restaurant made a big mistake. Of those 400 customers, how many did he collect contact information from? NONE! Duh! How is he going to get these folks back again? He should have been collecting names and email addresses for his own database, so he could build a contact list for email marketing.
• koen.h.pauwels: Given you are the only Spanish restaurant in a commercial area, you may want to first target business people for an alternative lunch place. (While Americans typically do not like European-style heavy lunches, Spanish food is known for its tapas, believed to be light and scalable, so you have perception on your side.) Next, make sure those customers come back with spouses and friends at night.
• Corpcommer: You can also host a special lunch or dinner event. The lunch idea would be that you'd offer special tapas or food delicacies that your restaurant doesn't usually have on the menu. ... You could announce the events by press release and take out local ads. I strongly suggest you send invitations to businesses in your area - perhaps offer "dessert on the house" to the invitees and any guests they bring with them to the event. ... Make sure your invitations have a phone number for invitees to make reservations. Alert callers to bring their business cards for an event raffle.
• mgoodman: Don't underestimate the power of buzz - that word-of-mouth referral phenomenon t hat happens when people discover something worth passing on. Pick up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point," and read it. Then find a publicity person with a good track record and pay him/her a reasonable fee to help you do this right. For a relatively small up-front investment, you will have people lining up to try the place. Now the caution: If the initial experience isn't truly noteworthy, all your effort will go down the drain. The "buzz machine" works both ways.
• alice: Some thoughts: 1. Unique uniforms for your crew 2. Live entertainment 3. Free drinks for a certain amount consumed 4. Offer a ladies' night or men's night where they get free drinks 5. Grand opening where food and drinks will be free 6. Fliers 7. Open your place for special events

Question: How To Get Customers Into a New Restaurant

Do you have something to add? Feel free, if you like. Even though the question is closed (and you can't earn points for it), the Asker will be alerted to your response.

TIPS & TRICKS: STRIKE IT RICH

As many of you have noticed, we have more than 500 open questions right now. Many of these are old questions from March and April that have been left open by their Askers. Usually when Askers abandon their questions, I go through the forum and close them myself. But things have been crazy-busy around here and I haven't had a chance to do this lately.

But the good news is I will be training my colleague, Carrie, to help me with this, and in the next 2 weeks, we plan to go on a rampage closing old questions. When we close questions on behalf of the Asker, we tend to split the points evenly among everyone who contributed a helpful response, without awarding the same person twice for the same discussion thread.

So here's the tip: If you are interested in Expert Points, spend some time in the next few days posting (meaningful) responses to open questions that were published in March and April and don't have many other answers. You could strike it rich. And the Asker will be grateful for your help.

Have a question? Ask the experts.

Post a brief synopsis below, and invite other members to offer their feedback.

My Question Title

COMMUNITY LEADERS

As of this week, these are our superstars! The Most Resourceful are those who have contributed the most entries to the Resource Library. The Most Expert are those with the highest number of Expert Points (earned by answering questions).

NOTE: These are our top members as of midday May 12, 2005

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: MEET JIM DEVEAU/CATALYST

Jim Deveau/Catalyst is one of KHE's pioneers. He's been participating with us since we opened the forum 17 months ago. This Top 25 expert has published 581 responses to questions. Read on to learn more about this week's featured member.

Where are you based?
I am located in Fairfield, CT, USA

What do you do in real-life?
I am an independent marketing consultant, and I work across a spectrum of strategy, planning, executive education, and project management assignments.

Tell us about your company.
I own and operate the Catalyst Consortium, a consulting firm which focuses on accelerating business results via the infusion of practical insights and marketing recommendations. My clients range in size from start-up companies to Fortune 500 firms, but they share a common need. Each needs clear direction and/or implementation support from a credible source with line management experience. I leverage resources for these clients from my personal network, and I sometimes operate as an "Executive in Residence" at a client firm over an extended period.

How did you find KHE?
I was forwarded a link the MarketingProfs from a professional network contact, and I subscribed to the regular newsletter. I received word of the KHE launch via the newsletter, and I was immediately drawn to the concept.

What kinds of KHE questions do you enjoy most?
I absolutely love questions that come from thoughtful practitioners who lay out their issues in a organized fashion. I find myself drawn to 2 distinct question types. The first is a intellectual query that focuses on strategy, branding, or decision making where the questioner has done a good job of presenting the case. The second is a free-ended brainstorming question where I can get involved in the thread and build on comments and suggestions from my colleagues here.

What professional organizations do you belong to?
I am an active member of Marketing Executives Networking Group, which is a screened professional network for marketers who have worked at the VP level or higher. I am the Founder and Chairman of the Graduate Business Forum, which is a network of former student leaders from the worlds top business schools. I am also active on LinkedIn, and I invite my colleagues here to link with me.

How did you get started in marketing?
I have been in the marketing field for 22 years. Believe it or not - I came to this career by chance in a life-changing personal epiphany. I was working as a cancer researcher at the Yale Medical School, and started dating a woman who was a product manager for a highly-successful product. I was amazed and intrigued by her field, and saw it as a wonderful way to do many things I loved AND have a profession. I stopped preparing for the Medical Boards, applied to business school, and began my career.

What is the value KHE provides to you personally?
The KHE is the place I come to exercise my brain, relax and unwind, and pick up a few important pointers as I go about my day.  While my professional life has been hectic lately, I generally love to come here at night and kick back for a half hour or so.

COMMUNITY STATS

Active Unique Participants (to date): 5,931
Closed Questions (to date): 6,506
Currently Open Questions: 531
Total Responses (to date): 47,005
Subscribers to this newsletter: 14,618

YOUR ACCOUNT SUMMARY

These numbers come directly from YOUR profile. Question Points tells you how many points you have available for asking questions in the forum. Expert Points indicates your standing in the community based on answers you have posted. Visit this FAQ, if you want to know more.

Question Points: %%PointsBalance%%
Expert Points: %%PointsCum%%

Click here to buy more Question Points

SUCCESS STORY

ASVP/ChrisB shares this week's good news:

"Faced with a looming deadline for an email campaign and no tools to perform the job, I placed a question and hoped an answer would come quickly. The number, speed and quality of responses was just what I needed, all I had to do was look through the options and pick the one with which I felt most comfortable. 

Tim Pepper (Pepper Blue) is top of the email marketing ratings at KHE (World #1), so I figured he had to know what he was talking about, and went with his recommendation. Couple of days later, the email is done, click-through rates are amazing and the marketing campaign is going well. I have full stats and look forward to the next campaign. Thanks, KHE and all those who submitted a response. And a massive thank you to Tim Pepper who had a 40-minute Skype call with me between Phoenix and Australia, to help me get around the screens I needed very, very quickly."

The Question: Where Can I Source Turnkey E-newsletter Mailing?

SPECIAL THANKS

Thank you, Jim Deveau, cettyand ASVP/ChrisB for providing content for this newsletter. And thanks to all the community members who have emailed or posted suggestions, technical reports or questions since the last issue. Your energy drives this community's development. We couldn't do it without you!

Normally, here I would list the names of those who emailed in the last two weeks, but today I can't do that. In our constant pursuit of improvement we recently implemented a new ticket tracking system for customer feedback. The implementation - for KHE mail - has been a bit bumpy. As a result, I'm having trouble getting to my messages. We should have it sorted out next week. So if you're waiting to hear from me, please be patient a few more days!

Finally, thanks to my MP colleagues for making my job easy: Aaron, Carrie, Shelley, Sharon, Achim, Ann, Roy and Allen.

LAST LAUGH

I like to close with a smile. So this space is dedicated to something amusing one of you folks have posted in the forum.

Here's a thread with lots of funny quotes, but I think this one from W.M.M.A. is my favorite: "After all ... IT ISN'T FRIED ANYWAY ... It's kinda steamed. But Kentucky Steamed Chicken just doesn't ... well, it makes me gag."

Discussion: "KFC" Or "Kentucky Fried Chicken"?

Forum Feedback: The Know-How Exchange is still young. So we're constantly refining how things work. We have a gigantic list of action items, and your feedback helps us prioritize it. So please feel free to reply to this email with any suggestions. Thanks, in advance, for your time!

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