What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Learn From Food Trucks
What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Learn From Food Trucks
If you just
build it, they probably won’t come.
In the era of Amazon, Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes, buyers are
increasingly choosy when it comes to what they’ll spend their money on. To woo
potential clients, brands have to offer something extraordinary. And then
there’s the small issue of retaining those new customers.
I’ve noticed that in the race to win consumers’ hearts (and
wallets), entrepreneurs—from restaurants to software vendors—are increasingly
turning to an old-fashioned fix. Their quaint recipe for success: Don’t make the
customer come to you. Go to them.
These companies—many of which just so happen to be household
names—have all found ways to make it easier for clients to engage and
transactions to happen. Think of it as door-to-door sales for the digital
age.
Food trucks: Bringing tasty, affordable cuisine straight to
the customer.
The explosive growth in popularity of food trucks in North America
over the past few years has been hard to miss. Food trucks are featured on reality TV shows, they’re being Zagat
rated and they’re the focus of hundreds of adoring blogs and massive media coverage.
Why? Food trucks did what most bricks-and-mortar restaurants
couldn’t. They brought their tasty, affordable offerings straight to the
festivals, street corners, and office buildings where their target consumers
live, work and eat. Forward-thinking vendors chose a new, more direct way to
reach their target consumers. I think there’s a lesson there for all of us.
Zipcar: Convenient transportation for people who didn’t even
know they needed it.
When Zipcar first emerged in the early 2000s, it seemed like a
far-fetched idea. Sharing cars? Ten years later, the company is at the head of a
flourishing worldwide car-sharing industry. In fact, earlier
this year one of the world’s most established car-rental brands Avis Budget
Company, purchased Zipcar for a cool $500 million.
Why did Zipcar take off? For starters, they parked their rentals
along streets in heavily trafficked urban neighbourhoods—right under their
target customers’ noses. Zipcar brought cars to drivers instead of waiting for
drivers to come to them. Sprinkle in a bit of tech savvy behind the scenes and
convenient registration and you’ve got a formula for success.
Netflix: Home entertainment straight to your doorstep. . .
and TV screen.
It’s hard to believe that less than 10 years ago, Netflix was David to the then-Goliath Blockbuster movie rental chain.
Fast forward to the present and Blockbuster is nearly defunct, while Netflix has
turned the video rental industry on its head, changing the way that people
consume home entertainment. And the company shows no signs of slowing down,
having hit all-time stock highs this year.
Netflix’ enormous success over the past decade is of course largely
due to the fact that it skipped storefronts and instead reached its target
consumers more directly via the internet and their mailboxes. By taking this
non-traditional approach, Netflix was able to reach and lock down a loyal new
consumer base.
Square: Easy, on-the-go transactions in the palm of your
hand.
A friend of mine was recently blown away when he went scuba diving
in the tropics and was able to pay for his equipment and training session on the
beach using his iPhone. Three years since its launch, Square has become a runaway hit,
giving merchants armed with just an iPhone the ability to conduct seamless
credit card transactions—from anywhere.
Today, over 3 million merchants have signed up for the Square
transaction service to process $12 billion a year in transactions. By taking the
point of transaction to the consumer rather than making the consumer come to the
point of transaction, Square has transformed how we shop.
Hootlet: Social media, everywhere.
In just under a decade, social media has emerged as a game-changing
technology, forever altering the way we communicate with each other—at home and
at work.
At my company we’ve recently added a new tool that lets people tap
into social media easier than ever before. With the Hootlet, users can (while browsing
the web) immediately share anything they find to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and
more, without ever leaving the window. They can also search for geo-specific
social media messages by others in real-time, all from within familiar platforms
like Google Maps or Yelp.
In short, we've taken a page from the food truck strategy, bringing
social media directly to our users, rather than making them go to social media.
Once installed into your Chrome
browser, the free Hootlet is
there instantly, adding a social element to anything you do on the web.
How do extraordinary brands win your heart? Do you prefer that
companies come to you?
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For more social media insight and to learn more about my
company, follow HootSuite on
LinkedIn.
Image Credit: Timothy J Carroll
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