Location As Destination

If you are not a place people are automatically heading for Black Friday or the Holiday Season, consider creating a reason for people to visit.

For example, a burger joint is not specifically a destination for Christmastime, but what could you do to leverage the traffic, convert it to sales, sample products or give an educational opportunity to potential customers?

In a mall or high traffic area though, the burger joint could set itself up as a respite from the shopping chaos. Set up an area for the guys to watch sports or play video games while enjoying a burger and a beer while their wives shop. Create a game corner for the kids. To ease tired shoulders, offer 10 minute seated massages with purchase.

The first task is to get people to your location, the next is to do something with that traffic. Have product specials. Feature your gift cards as perfect gifts or your catering as an answer to their Holiday entertaining needs.

Another example using the burger place is to position themselves as “the” place to eat to recharge while you are shopping during the Holiday season. What could they do to make customers want to go there?

• Offer free gift wrapping.
• Offer free seated back massage with every purchase over $20.
• Launch a limited-time product only available during the couple of weeks after Thanksgiving. Eggnog shake.
• Have employees sample slider-sized burgers just outside your doors.
• Deliver a midnight snack to those standing in line outside the popular retailer. Toys-R-Us? Walmart? Offer a bounce-back offer to visit the restaurant.

A movie theater could position itself as the anti-Black Friday destination, showing only non-Holiday movies to take people’s mind off of the silver bells.

• Partner with your town’s best caramel corn maker and offer caramel corn as an extra option to plain popcorn for the same price.
• Host a Holiday lottery. All ticket holders are automatically entered into the theater’s prize bundle. If your ticket number is selected (while you are there during the movie – winners are posted at the theater exits), you can win a $500 shopping spree.