Drive-in Theater Marketing Case Study. How to make Drive-ins more profitable.
Posted on 02. Jul, 2010 by Patrick Curl in Inbound Marketing, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Websites, Social Media, Video Marketing
Image by Denise Mattox
How to bring Drive-ins back from the cusp of Extinction.
I absolutely love going to Drive-in theaters. First off I love movies, secondly I love the nastalgic feeling a Drive-in theater brings, thirdly I love the price – you can’t beat two movies for the price of one. It’s really a great deal.
As excited as I am about Drive-in theaters, not everybody is. In the heyday of Drive-ins there were over 4,000 screens across the country, now there’s only 10% of that – only 400 drive-ins. It’s a sad thought but someday the Drive-in movie may be as extinct as the do-do bird. I’m going to share some of my insights on why this is happening, and how to fight it.
Most drive-ins are family owned, which is great – I’m all about small businesses but sometimes there is older folks running the theater, people who aren’t necessarily upto speed with modern technologies. I’ve yet to see a drive-in theater who’s website is powered by WordPress, and that blogs frequently about the latest upcoming movies.
I’m just waiting to see a Drive-in theater that has a stellar social media marketing campaign. So far, their web sites are as nostalgic as their movie going experience. Each Drive-in theater web site I’ve looked at reminds me of a cheap GeoCities site back in the early days of the world wide web.
I’m going to explain what I would do as a Drive-in Theater owner to make my business rock solid, and more profitable. I’m going to break this post into 3 parts: Social, Mobile, and Local Marketing, Concessions Profits Maximization, Additional revenue streams.
1. Social, Mobile, and Local Marketing. Getting customers to your Drive-in should always be your first priority, unless you’re constantly sold out, then you can skip this step. When it comes to social media you need to be proactive and find out what people are saying about you online, address their concerns, and give a good customer experience all around.
Example: The drive-in around here I did a search on, I’m on not going to name the Drive-in I don’t want to alienate or embarrass the owners – but on Yahoo reviews a long time ago there was a very derogatory remark left about the drive-in. Some other reviewers stood up for the Drive-in but for the most part no official spokesperson for the Drive-in stepped forward and tried to remedy the situation. I’m sure instead they lost one customer for life, and maybe others who saw that remark.
A few weeks ago I went to this same Drive-in and due to technical difficulties we ended up missing about 30 minutes of the main movie we had come to see. They didn’t say apologize or anything. I didn’t ask for my money back, but ever since that day I’ve noticed less and less people at the Drive-in. A lot of the people I see there are regulars, and now they’re not coming back.
One remedy would’ve been to give everyone a free $5 concession stand item. Sure they might’ve lost a little bit of money, but it would’ve gone a long ways towards saving face, and saving future customers.
Social Media Marketing: Ten years ago it was important for every business to have a web site, now it’s the web profile(s) on social networks. It’s very important to create a a social presence for your Drive-in theater. People can then tweet that they are going to your Drive-in and you can tweet back at them, or you can send messages and specials to your facebook ‘likers’. The bottom line is leads – in this case people who might be enticed to visit your drive-in. The beauty of social media is also that you can get people to help you spread the word and sharing your profiles to their friends.
People really want to connect with you, and your brand. They want to know who owns the Drive-in, the history behind it, it adds to the ‘nostalgic’ feeling. Give them what they want.
Another tip to reaching out to via social media is to contact local influencers, bloggers, and social media marketers – give them free tickets to give away on their blog, in exchange for blogging about your Drive-in. You could do the same with radio DJs too.
Mobile Marketing: SMS shortcode marketing is a great way to interact with your customers. Run a contest each night at a specific time that the first three people to send a text message to your special # will receive a free concession. To know when to text they gotta be a subscriber of your sms newsletter. — This way you can send weekly updates telling them what new movies are coming out, maybe even give them special coupons.
I would also recommend having a mobile version of your website. It’s a fact that 40% of all web site traffic now comes from mobile devices, and if you’re site isn’t optimized people looking for your Drive-in may not be able to see the web page.
Local Marketing: I could see Foursquare becoming very popular for a Drive-in, and Gowalla too. Why not offer the Mayor of the drive-in a free Large Popcorn? The mayor is someone who visits the Drive-in more than anyone else. They are your loyalest customers, and they certainly deserve to be rewarded. The special thing about Foursquare and Gowalla is that whenever someone checks-in – it tells all their friends where they’re at. Sometimes those friends will then go and meet up with that person where they are, this means more potential customers. It also could mean their friend saw they went to the drive-in last night, and they decided to plan on going the next day by themselves.
It’s also a good idea to have an optimized profile in all the local directories like Citysearch, Yelp, Merchantcircle, ShopCity, etc.
2. Concessions Maximization. Concessions is where Drive-ins make the bulk of their money. Yet, many people often smuggle food into the drive-in taking a big bite out of their proceeds. To combat this a lot of Drive-ins have begun charging $5 per car for a ‘food’ ticket. This allows outside food into the Drive-in. This is one way of going about things, but from a consumer it seems a little hard-pressured.
I think there’s a better way. First off you should make sure that your food is the best it can be, because I remember going to Drive-ins as a child and the food was about as good as school cafeteria fare, and that wasn’t that great. Now that you have better food, you should find a way to get more people into the concession house. To do this you should have a free giveaway every night. Nothing big, something small. I’d recommend switching it up nightly. For instance you could do 1/4th of a pretzel one night, half a slice of pizza another night.
These small ‘trial’ sized freebies will get people hungry, and will be a great way to introduce people to your products. If they’ve never tried your food before they are less likely to want to. I know sometimes I’d rather much buy pizza before I come just because I konw what I’m getting at a pizzeria. I don’t know the quality of food at the concessions. Of course a good social media / local directory campaign can help by encouraging people to write reviews about your concessions.
Another way I’d maximize concession purchases is to have a customer loyalty program. Initially a punch card that every 12 spends of $5 gets you a free Concession item of your choice upto $8 value. So they end up spending $60 and getting $8 back. These cards could also have another line for movie rewards. Say for every 12 trips to the drive-in they get one free movie entry – one stamp per vehicle per entry. So in other words one stamp per car trip, not per person on the movie tickets.
Lastly, I would create some better video. The nostalgic 50′s cartoons are great – but they’re lacking in taste appeal. For some reason food looks better today than it did back then or something, but when I watch a Papa John’s pizza commercial I’m hungry immediately afterwards, when I watch a concession stand commercial at the drive-in sometimes I’m actually LESS hungry.
It might cost some money but get some user opinions of the food on tape, testimonials sell. An amateur video showing new people eating the concessions and taking taste tests would sell the food much better.As a bonus you can upload the video to youtube and share it on facebook, twitter, and your blog.
Also be sure to pass out full-color menus with coupons to EVERY car that comes through the gate. Pictures sell, and coupons sell.
3. Additional streams of revenue: There’s a lot more you could do with the Drive-in space.I’m just going to run off some ideas here:
- You could host a battle of the bands every weekend before the movies. This would give people more time to work up an appetite. People could vote on their favorite bands via twitter, sms, or online. At the end of the summer you could have a ‘finals’ competition and give away some prize to the winner. The last competition could be an all day thing that you could sell tickets to, and open the concession stand all day.
- Add a mini-golf course along the sidelines. Charge a low cost to play. Again open a bit early so people coming to watch the movies can also play some mini-golf.
- Add a cornhole game and charge a fee to play, again also open early so people can play.
- Have On-Screen advertising. You could make an extra $500-1000 a night just off advertising.
- Post billboards along the sides high enough to block out extra ambient light that might dim the screen, and also selling advertising on the billboards.
- Sell drive-in movie memorabilia, t-shirts, souvenires, etc in the concession stand and online.
- Many drive-ins already host flea markets, but if yours doesn’t that’s a great idea as well.
- Have special theme nights. Like an all night Nightmare movie festival – featuring all horror movies – 5 of them back to back. The older movies are cheaper to get usually, and you could charge more for the tickets since its a special occassion.
- Sell dvd’s on your website, or have adsense, or other affiliate ad monetization.
- If you have a large size land and extra space you could setup a Paintball area. Paintball is very popular and can bring in some decent amount of money.
Really you just need to be creative. Think of ways that you could make even a little bit more money. Maybe add a small uptick on all your products. Most people won’t notice an extra $0.25 but add it to every item and you could make a decent amount more money than you’re already making. Just be sure to let your customers know its going to happen before you up it. They will understand, they’d rather you up the price, than go out of business. I would pay more to go to the local Drive-in if it meant keeping the Drive-in. I’m not ready to see them become extinct.
Of course if you need help implementing any of these strategies, MarketingOC would love to help you get the ball rolling. Just give us a call!
Got any other Drive-in Marketing Ideas that you’d like to share? Do you own a Drive-in and have some secret tips you’d like to share with other Drive-in owners? Leave them in the comments please, and thank you!
When It Comes to Business: Video Isn’t Only For Watching – It’s For Repurposing
Posted on 26. May, 2010 by Brian Fluhr in Blog, Video Marketing
By now everybody is familiar with YouTube and the very fact that if you shoot a video, it is likely to end up being stored on this now ubiquitous video sharing service. After all, storing your video on YouTube is free – and sadly for many business videos, YouTube becomes just that: a place to store videos – the online version of a DVD shelf.
The real power in video is telling a story – and having that story shared across many different marketing channels. Sharing and repurposing your company videos across multiple channels is not only an effective way to reach a wider audience, it also reduces the overall cost of your video production. In fact, video can be used to support traditional advertising channels – even the old classic: direct mail. Here’s a perfect example:
Business Need:
Midwest Employers Casualty markets workers compensation insurance to employers and independent insurance workers. They were looking for a way to stand out amongst their competition in this commoditized market.
Strategy to Address That Need:
Developed a video showcasing 26 compelling personal stories of service and employee treatment and recovery.
Tactics that Delivered on That Strategy:
Sent the video on a DVD via snail mail to their database of approximately 11,000 prospects at a cost of approximately $2 each.
Real World Results:
The effort resulted in $1 million in new business immediately as a result of the direct mail and video campaign – plus they have continued to use that video on their web site, at tradeshows, in webinars, presentations and elsewhere.
Now, that’s a darn good ROI – especially considering it cost about $20K to produce the video.
The Bottom Line For Your Business:
A lot of times, we hear clients say they want to shoot a YouTube video. That’s great, but every video should be part of a bigger picture – an integrated campaign where that video can be shared via your social media profiles, your mobile marketing efforts and yes, even through direct mail.
Here’s the video: