Tracie Hitz

My brain is always marketing.  No matter where I go, I see something and wonder if there is a way to spin that into a marketing idea for one of our clients?  I also see or read things that I wonder if they could be applied to my dating life?  Living in Oklahoma City compared to Chicago is a much smaller target audience, so I need to do lots of research before implementing a plan.  Seth Godin is right, “Mass marketing is dead.” 

So with that in mind, I went out to watch basketball last weekend in an effort to find a guy who has one of the things on the top of my “To Date” list - someone who likes sports.  We went out on a Sunday because in Oklahoma, that is truly a family day so the married folks are rarely out.  We tested this hypothesis when we went out for the Super Bowl the last two years, with this past year spending our time bouncing around to five different places with none of those bars having more than 20 people inside.

Once we found a place that was semi-crowded, we sat at the bar to be more approachable, as well as befriend the bartender to gather more research.  With his help, we surveyed the crowd and narrowed down our prospects to two tables.  From there we picked the table with the most guys to increase our chances of finding someone who was single.  Side note, the friend I was with that day is married … would you bring your competitor with you?

From there, we needed to figure out who at that table might be interested.  In other words, we needed to turn a cold lead into a warm lead.  We did this by buying four beers for the table of eight guys.  We asked the waitress to put the beers on the table and offer them to anyone who was single.  She only walked away with one beer and three of the guys lifted the other three bottles in our direction.  Cheers.

Spoiler Alert: After talking with them for awhile, they didn’t turn out to be anything more than new friends, but they did confirm that our beer-buying technique is a good way to target market.  With that information, we will head out again this weekend to check out a Country Music Concert at the casino that will also have a DJ spinning tunes, encourages people to wear pajamas and will have a mechanical bull.  That probably isn’t going to be my kind of crowd, but it’s kinda hard to pass up a party like that.  We don’t know what to expect, except some cowboys of course, but I’m confident we can adjust our marketing plan accordingly.  When all else fails, buy a beer.