Donut Shop Marketing

Excerpted from REM Magazine, February 2008

By Heino Molls

A few weeks ago I was at the Tim Hortons drive-through in beautiful Stratford , Ontario. As is typical at Timmy’s, there was a line-up of a few cars as I waited for my turn.

When I got to the window to get my order, the young lady at the drive-through counter told me to keep my money because my coffee and donut has been paid for by the person in the car in front of me, who had already left. “Here’s his card,” she said.

The card was from the local radio station news announcer. His name is Greg Wreford. He even had a sticker printed up for the back of the card, saying, “A random act of kindness from CJCS / Mix FM Radio.”

My first thought was one of sincere gratitude. This gesture was hardly going to make my year, or month or week, but it sure was a nice think to happen that day. We all get occupied with work, concerns, and tasks that we must get done every day. As we churn through our day we don’t expect small gestures of kindness from others. That’s really too bad and that is probably worth a few columns in itself. But the point of this column right now is to express a small appreciation for the gesture and a tip of the hat to this fellow.

Thank you, Mr. Wreford.

My second thought was to turn on this nice fellow’s radio station: CJCS Stratford. They are even online. You can click to listen to the radio station through their website, www.cjcsradio.com.

I confess that I had not really given this local yokel radio station much of a listen even though I have lived in this wonderful city for more than 10 years. So I listened for a while and I realized that they were hardly local yokels. They provided world-class production for sports, information and national news as well as important local community happenings. I’m going to listen more frequently in the future.

My third thought was that this simple gesture of a coffee and donut was hardly an expensive gift, but it was important enough for me to have a look or in this case, a listen to the services that his company/radio station had to offer. So this small purchase got him a listener. That’s not much, but hey, maybe I might tell my friends (and I mean both of them) and they might listen and so on. When you add it all up, it is pretty clever marketing by my reckoning.

Now I know that this is not a new idea. I have heard tell of this little marketing scam lots of times. But this is the first time I have been the recipient of such a thing and let me tell you, it works. It was a real lift for me that day and I did indeed use this fellow’s services. Everybody was happy in the ploy.

So if you haven’t already tried this before, give it a try. Make a point of going through the drive-through donut shop in the area that you service. Print up some stickers on your business card wishing the customer behind you a nice day or any other kind of message. Pay for the coffee and donuts (come on, how much can it be?) and ask the clerk to give them your card.

I cannot guarantee that you will get a sale out of it. I cannot tell you for sure you will get a listing on account because of it. I cannot promise that your business will improve because of it.

But I can tell you for sure that it works.

Just ask Greg Wreford at CJCS Radio in Stratford. Not only did he get a new listener, he got a guy to write a whole column about his brilliant marketing.

- Heino Molls is the publisher of REM (Real Estate Marketing)