Bad service can lead to opportunities
At the end of Covid 19 in mid 2020, one of my side hustles, Mango Kona was doing exceptionally well selling lovo, cheesecakes and tiramisus. We were operating out of 67 Knollys Street Suva and doing a roaring trade of 200+ ready-made cheesecakes a week, 150 cuppa cheesecakes and sold out lovos over the weekend.
The business had grown from 0 to over FJD$37,000 in 6 months. How did it get here?
Social Media!
Interestingly though, when I started using Facebook to boost posts, sales doubled month over month for the first 3 months.
Then, in the fourth month, the sales growth stopped doubling - they slowed down. Sales increased by about 50% in the fourth month, then 40% in the fifth month, and then less than 30% in the sixth month. When the growth started to taper off, I clearly understood that my media mix was not right and that I needed to get in front of the available target market through different means.
So I called up the newspapers and the radio stations to get stats on their readership , listenership and rates. Both of the newspapers refused to give information on circulation and the radio stations just wouldn’t return the calls or queries.
Meanwhile, by this stage, our ad spend on Facebook had reached $3,600 per month by the sixth month. When these mass media outllets did not get back to me, I was still determined to get in front of the people in a different way, not just with Social Media. I started wondering, how else can I get in front of the available target market?
Standing there in front of my door on Knollys Street, looking out at the daily bumper-to-bumper traffic, I had an “aha!” moment. Right in front of me was my solution.
The EFL Power Pole.
I realized it was time to go back to basics to support my digital strategies. So back to EFL I went as I had 20 years ago under my old advertising agency AdTime. 20 years ago, we had initiated and launched Street Pole Banner Advertising on EFL Powerpoles.
It was now time to do it again.
Where are you getting bad service? Is that bad service highlighting a gap in the market place where you can innovate?
Ask the right questions.
