← Making It with Jon Davids
Making It with Jon Davids
228 - This piece of paper brings in 100's of customers (steal the strategy)
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What's up, JD Family? Great episode coming up for you right now. And just so you know, there's a whole bunch of visuals in this episode. So if you want to see them, head over to YouTube.com davids. You can watch the video of today's episode also. Here we go. This restaurant is bringing in tons of customers with a piece of paper, and this one's doing it with a clock. This one does it with whatever that is. Now, these all might look silly, weird, gimmicky, whatever. The truth is, they are all crazy effective at doing the one thing your business is supposed to do. Make money. And there's plenty to learn from how these guys are doing it. I'm going to share four key tactics to get it right. Plus, stick with me to the end. I'll tell you how to use these tactics in your business, no matter what business you're in. My name is John Davids. I help brands like these make millions of dollars. So they pay me millions of dollars, and I make videos like this to help y' all make many, many millions of dollars. Let's do it foreign. You're listening to Making it with John Davids. So this restaurant in Lebanon is called Kitchen Garage, and they've got this big clock on the wall just outside, and there's a sign on the clock that says, pause the time at 10.00 seconds and get the meal you ordered for free. If you look at these guys on social media, they've been covered so much. There are TikToks on them, Instagram reels, Facebook stories. They're on Snapchat, Pinterest, all over. They also have tons of local news coverage, which is actually really good because it cranks you up in search. But notice how they structure the offer. Pause the time at 10 seconds and get the meal you have ordered for free. That's code for saying you've got to spend money first. And then you get to play our fun little game afterwards. So you can't just walk in off the street, step up to the clock, smash the button, and get free food. It's only for paying customers. The other thing is that they put the clock outside the restaurant, not inside. So when people play the clock game, they're also part of the draw. They're the props. Everyone outside can see them. They walk over. And now you got more people who might buy your stuff. I got a lot more to say about this clock thing. But first, let's talk about the dancing cafe. Look at this sign. Walk in dancing for a free donut. There's actually a few spots doing this. There's a donut shop in Texas. I found a few in New York. And apparently Krispy Kreme does this too. And it's simple. You take a sheet of paper, you grab a Sharpie and you write down seven words. People walk in dancing all the time. Then other people in that cafe film them, post it. And what do you think those dancers do when they see themselves on social? They repost it on their channels. And this place gets a ton of free views. The cafe gets attention. They also create a vibe in the store when customers are constantly dancing. And this is a huge brand builder because you become known as the cafe where people are dancing. Now put a pin in that one for a second. And let's round this out with my third marketing power move. This is making me nauseous. So this pizza joint called Glide Pizza has a dude in yellow spandex, skin tight, we can all see it. And on his head, he's wearing a cube with the words free pizza. It's on three sides, and on the front side of the cube, there's this QR code, a big QR code. Then in his hands, he's holding a sign that says scan if you can. So this guy's running all over the place like a six year old, hopped up on Slurpees and Sour Patch Kids. He's dodging people. He's throwing up up his arms to block the QR code on his head, doing everything he can to get attention. But also make sure you can't actually scan the QR code because of course, if you do, you get free pizza. He doesn't want that. This one works on so many different levels. This episode is brought to you by my Playbook social media selling machine, available right now@johndavids.com playbook. Let's be real. You don't want likes. You want sales. You want to know that customers are going to show up every day from the content you're already posting. This playbook shows you how that's done, how to turn social posts into cash flow, and how to scale in a way that's simple, repeatable, and on brand. Grab it free right now@johndavids.com Playbook. That's johndavids.com playbook. All right. Okay, quick recap before we go forward. So in one corner, we got our 10 second stopwatch. Get a free meal if you got the zeal. In the second corner, you'll find the dancing cafe serving moves all day. And in the third corner, We've got the running man, free pizza, QR code, sneakers laced, ovens blazed. Scan it, sprint it, slice it, win it. You know what this is all about, boys and girls? Let's get down to business. Why do these all work? Well, let's start with the most basic reason of all, and it's the one that everyone hears all the time, but most people still treat it like an afterthought. All these promotions are built to go viral. They're built for the social feed. And a lot of people still in 2025 hear this and they think, yeah, okay, cool, got it. What else? They know they should do it, but they still leave it until the very end of their planning. Or they just forget about it entirely and instead you should really be thinking about this from the very beginning. How can this thing blow up on social? How could this thing we're doing be shared by 10,000 people? And do you know why you have to think about this? Because of this thing. There's 8.3 billion mobile phones in the world today. IPhones, Galaxies, Redmi's, Vivos. Plus there's another 1.6 billion tablets in circulation. And iPads, Galaxy tabs, Matepads, Fire tablets, and I'm gonna bet on almost all those devices. There's a feed. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest. You know the deal, my friends. Do you know of any other time in human history where you have the ability, without middlemen, to push a piece of content out into the world and have it distributed for free instantly to millions and millions of screens? There's never ever been a time like this. So don't sleep on it. Build virality into your marketing. Make it the first thought, not the afterthought. Make it shareable. Sometimes just a few simple tweaks can take something from never getting seen to 80% share rate. I've seen it. We do it all the time. And you should, too. The second reason all these promotions work so well is these businesses get the math right, the marketing math. The customer gets value, the business makes money. Everyone's happy. Now, when I posted this story on Instagram, some people up in my comments immediately assumed that these businesses were losing money. Let me be clear. I don't know any of the leaders of these companies personally, so I can't say for sure. But I can tell you I all these activities can be done while you're making a ton of profit. Let's talk about the Dancing Donut Place first, because this is the one where everyone Gets a free thing, everybody. All you got to do is walk in dancing. So how do you control costs and make money if you're giving something away free to everyone? Well, there's actually a lot you can do to make money. First off, you control when the sign goes up and how long it's up for. You don't need to leave it up all day every day. You can put the sign up in the window for 30 minutes and then just take it down. And you might realize, hey, we only need about 20 people to get the free doughnut. And they'll share it on social, and that's enough for today. Or you bake a certain number of donuts and keep the sign up until that batch is gone. Okay, let's go even deeper, because you can look at the data and estimate. Maybe every time we give away a donut, people typically buy a cup of coffee. Or 70% of the time we give away a donut, the customer buys a dozen more donuts. And a dozen donuts is $20. And the cost of one free donut is 20 cents to me. Yeah, I'm happy to give away free donuts all day. I'm never taking that sign down because we make more money by keeping it up all the time. Just because the offer of free donuts seems too good to be true. Trust me, if it's a good business, someone in the back has done the marketing math and they're making money doing it. Now let's take a look at the pizza joint, because again, there were people up in my comments saying, oh, no, this place is going to lose so much money giving away free pizza. Well, again, you can limit how long the yellow spandex QR code dude goes outside for. Maybe he's out there jumping around for five minutes, and then he gets in his car and. And he goes home. You can also limit where he goes. So maybe you don't send him to the most crowded area in town where hundreds of people are gonna be snapping that QR code right away. You send him to a place where just a few people are, and you're really just doing it for the social content. So maybe you just need 10 or 15 people to capture the footage and you've got your social payoff. Also, and this is my favorite point, you can just limit the number of free pizzas to, let's say, 20. And then everyone else who scans that QR code and goes to that website, they get a webpage that says, sorry, this offer is expired, but click here and you'll get 20% off your next order. So now you got a whole bunch of new business. You can make customers happy and make the marketing work. That's what business is all about. Okay, guys, let me ask you this question. How often do you walk down the street and see someone jumping around like this or people walking into a cafe and dancing like this? Not too often. Right? And that's another really important lesson you gotta learn for any marketing to really work, and I mean really, really work, you need to interrupt the pattern. You need to do something that people don't expect you to do. When they expect it, and then you do it, they don't even notice. But when you do something they didn't expect, they can't avoid it because their brain clicks into action. Think about it. We all walk through our lives with routines. You wake up in the morning, you go to the bathroom, you brush your teeth, you make a coffee, you scroll your iPhone. Your brain isn't even really thinking about these things. It's just doing it. But what if all of a sudden you stepped outside your front door and a clown jumped out of a box and. And wished you a happy birthday? You'd notice that because that would interrupt your pattern. Every great piece of marketing has some sort of pattern interrupt built into it. If you allow people to stay on autopilot, they'll miss it. So you gotta do something that's out of the ordinary. And I'll give you one better. In the case of Stop the Clock and the Dancing Cafe, the pattern interrupt is actually the customer needing to take action. And that's especially good because it's not just thinking it's doing. It's getting someone to physically participate, which they're going to remember. So follow the rule. Always interrupt the pattern. And that takes me to number four. I want you to look closely at this restaurant with the clock. What do you notice around the clock? So there's one person who's playing the game, and then there is a line of people behind that person waiting to play the game. That right there is social proof. And this one's a biggie. There's this author named Robert Cialdini, who wrote a book called Influence, which is actually a great book if you want to learn about marketing and psychology. And in the book, he writes that social proof is one of the six core principles of influence. And the reason is simple. People look at what others are doing when they're unsure of how to act. It's hardwired into our brains. Cialdini actually ran a study to prove it. So get this. He wanted to see if he could get hotel guests to reuse their towels. When you stay at a hotel, sometimes you use the towels once and then you throw them on the floor. Cialdini wants to see if he can get you to use them more than one time. So for a long time, what hotels would do is they would just say, hey, it's really good for the environment when you reuse your towels. So the please, please, please, please, can you please reuse your towels and help the environment? All right, Some people do, but most people don't. So Cialdini comes along and says, hold my beer. He changes the messaging, and it's so simple. He just says, most guests who stay in this hotel room reuse their towels at least once. That's it. Just one sentence and towel reuse shoots up by 26%. Same hotel guests, same hotel, same towels. The only thing that changed was proof that other people were doing it too. And let's be honest, it wasn't even really proof. It was just the appearance of proof because a guy said that it happened. That's how powerful social proof is. It doesn't convince you logically. It just nudges you emotionally. Your brain says, if everyone else is doing it, I should probably do it too. Quick break. So I can tell you about Influicity. That's the little marketing agency I started in my apartment about 10 years ago. Well, fast forward, it is not so little anymore. Influicity works with some of the biggest brands in the world, building customer communities that drive revenue. We do this through influencers, podcasts, paid media, social media, content, AI and so much more. You can learn more@influicity.com and hey, while you're there, check out our case studies. We have a lot of them. That's influicity.com. now back to our restaurant with the clock. The genius isn't just in the clock. It's in the crowd. The clock creates. When you walk by and see 10 people lined up, all waiting to hit that big red button, your curiosity spikes. You don't even need to know what the game is. You just know that something fun, something worth doing is happening. The donut shop does the same thing. When someone's dancing for a donut and everyone else pulls out their phones to record it, that's an instant I gotta check this place out moment. And the pizza guy in the yellow spandex, oh, my Lord. He's basically a walking, flailing piece of social proof. The crowd, the laughing, the phones filming everything. It all tells you that something is happening, it's playing out in front of you and it's worth paying attention. So don't skip out on social proof, all right? I promised you the juice. How can you use these tactics across your business? Whatever business you're in, let's do it. Number one, E Commerce. If you run an E commerce business, do a promotion where you sell something for some crazy low price like 38 cents and then set your minimum order for free shipping to a higher number so that the customer either needs to pay for shipping or they need to buy something else to bring their order up. They get a great deal, you make money on the sale, everyone's happy. 2. Local stores. If you run any kind of local store, do a catch the manager day. The manager wears a silly hat or a badge or something to show who they are. And when a customer spots them in the store, they snap a selfie, they post it on social, they tag the store and they can win a prize. One winner per day. And this is a great way for people in the neighborhood to get to know the store, get to know the manager, it's all good. 3. Professional services. If you're an accounting firm, a law firm, you've got a booth at a trade show or a conference, do a roast, my business session. So you're going to have some fun with potential customers. They bring you a question, an accounting question, a law question, whatever, and you answer their question. But you do it like a roast. You have a little fun. And if you don't feel comfortable doing it personally, hire a professional stand up comedian to do it. You'll be the most entertaining booth at the whole conference. People are going to be lining up to take part. That's a real pattern. Break number four Restaurants. Do a secret menu password, post a cryptic hint on TikTok and if someone says that word when they're ordering their meal, they get a free off menu dish or they get a free dessert. Your best customers become insiders and you create a fun viral game. Number five gyms. If you run a gym, do a one minute challenge, set a target on the rowing machine or the treadmill and let people try to hit that target. And if they get it, their next workout is free. Plus I'll give you a bonus on this one. Give them a free pass for a friend who hasn't been to that gym before. Now you got a returning customer, you got a new customer, people are gonna love it. Do we have time for one more? I think we do. Software companies gamify your demo. If you got a video that you send to potential customers before you get on a sales call. In the demo video, say, hey guys, if you can answer this question during your sales call, we'll give you some cool free thing. You'll get people to watch your videos longer, actually pay attention. And then you'll know during the sales calls if they did because they'll have the answer to your secret question. Guys, the opportunities are endless. Get my best stuff to your inbox@john davids.com let's go out and make some money. This episode is brought to you by my Playbook website selling machine available right now@johndavids.com Playbook Most companies want websites that look nice. But a lot of nice looking websites don't sell. What you really want is a website that grabs attention, builds trust and turns visitors into buyers while you sleep. That's what this Playbook gives you. Based on 10 years of work we've done at Influicity optimizing websites for 7, 8 and 9 figure brands. Download the Playbook now at johndavids.com playbook that's johndavids.com Playbook.