Hey , I know you receive an email from me every Sunday but this is different… This past week I have been on the road, but I noticed something really important during the journey, that’s when I started typing this to tell you and everyone in the AB Afrikpreneur community (so follow me carefully )On Sunday as I was scrolling my Facebook timeline, after every regular post, the next post I saw was something talking about Cameroonian dishes & which one of them is the bestdid you notice that too? Or maybe you even posted something about it yourself…First off as a Banyangi guy, I’d go for ERU at any point BUT there’s something I don’t want you to miss from what’s happening right now…You see , there’s a certain popular drink called ‘Corona Extra’ which is sold in some African and European countriesWhen Coronavirus started hitting the streets in March 2020, a lot of people stopped consuming the Corona beer and the company plunged into a deep loss of around $150,000,0000 (one hundred and fifty million dollars)The owners of Corona beer made several statements stressing there was no link between coronavirus and their brand but it didn’t helpSurveys showed that drinkers were being put off by the association of the names ‘Corona’One survey revealed that 38% of beer drinkers wouldn’t buy the brand under any circumstances because of the virus outbreak, and another reported that there had been a spike in internet searches for ‘corona beer virus’ as WARC reportedOne of those days, the group announced they were halting the production of their beer…. boommmmm!, imagine you were the brand manager or marketer for Corona beer? How would you play it?It’s not an easy situation when the brand you manage shares the same name as one of the world’s global pandemic that has the world in gripBut the company did something strange that changed everythingA few months later, they announced they were donating a percentage of all their profits to fight the Coronavirus and around 300,000 antibacterial vels made from brewed alcoholThey started using lines like ‘for every corona beer sold, we’re donating a percentage to the fight against the coronavirus…’ (this is paraphrased)Do you know how this went ? A year on, latest data show that sales of Corona beer increased by 40% making it not only one of the fastest-growing alcohol brands but one of the fastest-growing grocery products recentlyIf you’re still reading this… , one of the biggest skills you’ll need to posses as a hustler and entrepreneur is the ability to watch peopleIf you want to make money selling anything, WATCH YOUR PEOPLE, watch your audience, see where their attention is focused and go for what’s picking their interestIt’s called “SOCIAL LISTENING”See , right now when Cameroonian dishes are trending onlineSome say its achuOthers like myself think the all time best meal is ERUAs a hustler and one with a business mind, what’s this saying to you and how do you access where the people’s attention is focused?Or maybe this has nothing direct to do with your industry…For example , August of every year is the month with the most birthdaysAs August approached this year, one cool thing we did was to advise one of our marketing clients to run a birthday campaign for their restaurant business Here’s what happened…Facebook has a small trick that will allow you to directly advertise to people who have upcoming birthdaysAnd that’s exactly what we leveraged, do you know what crazy thing we said in the ads?One of the lines said… ”… Because it’s your birth month, restaurant X is offering you a free meal to celebrate your birthday… ” And that’s how we asked the restaurant to offer a really small but ‘free teaser meal’ for everyone who came and proved August was their birth monthHypothetically, imagine we got just 30 people to take the free mealIf the staff treats them well and offers a really delicious first meal, our expectation is that 15 of those people should love the food and make restaurant X their favourite placeThis means the next time they came in, they probably came with a friend and spent X and X amount (which if you consider, has already covered the cost of their first ‘free meal’)And that’s assuming they return just one more time, because with businesses like saloons, restaurants, bars etc, there’s a high customer lifetime value(LTV)… That means an average client will stay with you for around a year except you treated them badly or they were moving to another locationIn essence, that means a small free meal which cost the restaurant like $2 maximum(around 1,000frs), could bring them a client who ended up spending not less than $200(around 100,000frs) in a yearof returning (talk less if they return with friends and recommend others), I’ll leave you to unpack this email yourself. When I was writing this, I said to myself there will be lots of thoughts running through your brain as you read because we could elaborate on each of these for hours. It’s a quick one I wrote on the road and you may also be noticing a few typos here and thereHere’s my point to you my friend …If you’re running a restaurant and a trend like this comes up, what about offering a free meal?(you can still offer a subsidized meal instead)If you’re a comedian, what about stealing the moment to produce skits that use various dishes to benefit from the trend? If you’re a content creator, what about creating content around what’s trending? Did you notice that in Nigeria when Obi Cubana was trending for his mother’s lavish funeral, hundreds of comedians, actors, shows, movies, artists, produced content around it? and some of them featured him in personMaybe you’re not able to directly make use of the food trend right now… I hope this gets your brain ticking in the right direction to look for what is trending in your field or when something else starts to trend that will need you to apply this undercover knowledgeMy dear , where everyone sees the fun, have fun too, but in all the fun, I want you to always think differently…Always do your SOCIAL LISTENING… pls share this email with someone, forward it to them now or copy and share with your social media, thank you…PS: we’re working on something exciting for AB Afrikpreneur and we will be sharing all the details with you this month.PPS: I’m now featured on FOX, NBC and some CBS affiliates in the US. It is one of the cool things I did last week. Haha this is super cool and I’m so thankful for the journey we’re building… Like I always say, cheers to many more years of shamelessly living and crazily excelling in passion and purpose Talk soon Arreyb Internet Entrepreneur | Journalist | Autho |
