Today's Tulsa World had a coupon for a free QT sandwich or wrap stuck on the top of the front page. I stopped by the store to pick up a fountain drink and saw the coupon on a stack of papers on the rack.
I bought the Tulsa World for fifty cents and had a $3.59 sandwich for free.
I tried the Triple Stack sandwich. It was cut diagonally into two wedges (the best foods are triangular in shape). The package was hard plastic (terrible environmental packaging) and the label said that the sandwich contained Ham, Turkey and Beef.
Some religions prohibit eating of cows and others prohibit consumption of pigs..I don't know any that prohibit eating turkeys, but it does seem rare to have all three in the same sandwich.
It was on wheat bread and it seemed healthy enough. I don't eat a lot of health food, (in fact health food makes me sick). I am sure that the meat had the proper amount of preservatives which is probably better for me anyway.
I also didn't like that the newspaper had a sticky coupon. Newspaper recycling revenue is the backbone of my recycling program and the sticker and glue are contaminants to normally clean newsprint. The glue they used was very light, but I have seen other times when it would potentially mess up the recyclability of the paper.
Overall, the value of a good sandwich made the transaction worthwhile. I hope they do the same promotion tomorrow so I can try wrap next time.
I saved that coupon from my World today. I wondered if it applied to any sandwich or wrap, regardless of price, but apparently so. Not bad.
I figure that I save enough money from the Sunday coupon inserts and offers like the QT coupon to at least pay for my annual World subscription. Always a spendthrift, I am a big user and believer in coupons! Seems to be getting more difficult though. When I renewed my annual World subscription last October, it was $200, plus carrier gratuity. I love my daily local paper, even if it is the Tulsa World, and would feel big void without it.
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Originally posted by Steve
I saved that coupon from my World today. I wondered if it applied to any sandwich or wrap, regardless of price, but apparently so. Not bad.
I figure that I save enough money from the Sunday coupon inserts and offers like the QT coupon to at least pay for my annual World subscription. Always a spendthrift, I am a big user and believer in coupons! Seems to be getting more difficult though. When I renewed my annual World subscription last October, it was $200, plus carrier gratuity. I love my daily local paper, even if it is the Tulsa World, and would feel big void without it.
I took mine to the QT at 81st and Memorial and received their cheapest sandwich that was mostly all bread. Not much of a deal.
I wish I had the same response to our promotions in 9 smaller newspapers. We printed 432,000 coupons Wednesday and last Sunday and only one came through our gate Saturday night.
It was a $10 Value.
I have almost given up on Newspaper advertising as I cannot quantify the costs versus the response.
Just hate to not include print in our media mix.
quote:
Originally posted by AMP
I wish I had the same response to our promotions in 9 smaller newspapers. We printed 432,000 coupons Wednesday and last Sunday and only one came through our gate Saturday night.
It was a $10 Value.
I have almost given up on Newspaper advertising as I cannot quantify the costs versus the response.
Just hate to not include print in our media mix.
What is your business and what was the coupon for AMP? 1 out of 432,000 is a pretty dismal response.
I always clip coupons and always will, they are just like cash money to me. Newspaper circulation has been on a downward dive for many years, especially since the rise of the internet, but I still subscribe daily. I would feel a big void without my daily local paper in hand. Must be a generational/age thing, as I suspect the younger you are, the less likely you are to read a printed newspaper.
You can print coupons youself from the internet for many items, although I have never done it. I mainly use coupons for things I buy regularly such as pet foods, cleaning and household products and some food items. I use restaurant coupons sometimes too if the savings is significant, but I rarely eat out.
quote:
Originally posted by AMP
I wish I had the same response to our promotions in 9 smaller newspapers. We printed 432,000 coupons Wednesday and last Sunday and only one came through our gate Saturday night.
It was a $10 Value.
I have almost given up on Newspaper advertising as I cannot quantify the costs versus the response.
Just hate to not include print in our media mix.
Just because you only received one coupon doesn't necessarily mean it was a bust. After all, I rarely clip coupons. But I still take note of events and restraunts that offer them.
Typically, I forget to bring the coupon. Or don't have time/energy (it sounds silly, I know) to clip coupons. But they still can point me towards interesting things.
Coupon was $10 off price of General Admission or $5, regular priceis $15 to the Outlaw Winter Nationals Indoor Dirt Track Races. Motorcycles, Hot Road Mowers, Champ Karts and ATV Pro Quads.
We publish in Daily Oklahoman zone 6 which covers south east OKC, Midwest City, Harrah, Shawnee, Luther, Jones and others surrounding the venue we use.
We also publish in these newspapers along with an editorial article describing the event and local participants if any: Midwest City, Shawnee, Seminole, Stillwater, Wewoka, Norman, New Castle and Mcloud papers Wednesday and Sunday papers. Plus we pay for a 500 word artlcle with a color photo in 5 of the papers in the sports section.
Coupon is 4"x4" reverse Black/White with line drawing of race vehicles, checker flags and the name address of the venue, title of the event, date/time of event and pricing of tickets with discount. Kids 6-16 are always "Just Five Bucks" under 6 Free.
Maybe five bucks is still too much to watch Hot Rod Mowers. Next time just give away a sandwich.
You could promote it as the world's biggest drive through restaurant.
Print may be really good for some marketing to specific demos. Apparently our ticket buyers use Print or Internet much.
With 150 entries we average a very small 75 hits on our web site monthly. Those are unique daily IP hits, not page reloads.
Out of 150 that complete our entry forms most events less than 30 people indicate they have access to the Internet or have used the Internet in the past year.
Among this group of people it appears that Internet is not a priority.
I believe marketing has a lot to do with knowing the demographics of a particular audience. Television seems to be our best buy for attracting fans and participants with Radio a distant 2nd and Print barely on the chart.
In Tulsa, a single interview of AMA National Rider #52 Gary Rogers in front of his big Transport with two of his Harley Davidson motorcycles during a 5 minute slot on the KOTV Morning Show generated 560 ticket sales at area O'Reilly Parts Stores in one day. We could quantify the immediate results of that time slot.
That event was held near Pryor, Oklahoma and generated 90% of the available tickets sold.
Not sure about the $5 being too high, we still get 350 at $15 at each event and 200 in the Pits at $20.
Bleachers in that building only hold 450 so we are near capacity at $15, just looking for the other 100.
I am going to follow the Casinos lead with a Ladies Night later this month with our Print Ad Promotion. All Ladies just $5 and all 18 or over are eligible to win up to $25,000 during the 1/2 time special drawing of the Ladies Night general admission ticket numbers.
When our announcer asks those in attendance at the opening of the show who came to see which divisions the Hot Rod Mowers are by far the crowd favorite. Motorcycles are second, Quads a distant third and the karts are normally last on the applause meter response.
When he asks how did you hear about the event? All paid advertising TV, Radio, Newspaper may get a 20% response with TV or Radio getting the largest response. The overall largest response is, " I heard about it from and/or I came to see a friend that races"
That answer is around 80%.
I call it an Inlaw show and not an Outlaw show.
Apparently your market doesn't read. But that is indicative of your market, not of the viability of print ads. Having an ad stuck to the outside of the Sunday Tulsa World is not only expensive, but effective if the target was properly chosen.
The coupon works for QT because QT sells a gross of newspapers every day. While print advertising may not yield many results, it was still getting the word out and may have complimented other forms of advertisement. Mainly you need to make sure you have ads at every ATV, motorcycle and lawnmower store and maybe hand out fliers at other (even unrelated) racing events.
Also, please get a better website.
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March 3rd - Location TBA
Hopefully by now you've figured out where...
Thanks for the suggestions.
I have used the Yahoo Free web site since 2003, prior to that I used Freeyellow for several years. The Yahoo site has links from several other motorsports sites to it. Would it not be a major pain to change all those listings? Is that worse than a physical address or phone number change?
Do you mean the content the host or both on the web site? I have never been totally happy with the style, but it is free and seems to work as we do not have many people participating with us that own computers or have access to the internet according to their response to those questions. So I guess you get what you pay for.
We have promotional videos on You Tube and pictures of the evenets listed on photo sites that directs to the other.
We distribute over 10,000 flyers during the Tulsa Shootout and the Chili Bowl, plus at other races in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas and I am the track announcer at two racetracks in Oklahoma plus I announce select events at four racetracks in Texas and one in Louisianna. I always plug other events during intermission.
We print and distribute 2,000 $5 discount coupons that we place one week prior to the race date at cash register counters of convienence stores and local cafes and restaurants in the surrounding areas where the events occur.
We are fortunate in the OKC area to have 7 Power Sports dealers that are co-sponsors of the event and pay for trophies, plus provide a portion of the Cash Purse in the Pro-Am divisions. They have our information at or near the counter and are responsible for helping to increase our participant counts each event. Of course keeping in mind our events are in the Winter may contribute to why the Power Sports dealers do not send us much spectator traffic, as their business is typically slow during cold and bad weather.
We also have a dozen local merchants that advertise with our program. Most are firms that directly benefit from the traffic we bring into the area. Types of these businesses include Fuel Stations, Restaurants, Auto Parts, Machine Shops, Trailer Sales, Auto/Truck Sales, Power Sports Dealers, Motels.
This Winter has been a struggle for us as our opening round saw 12" of snow, and up to last weekend we have had 12" of Snow, 6" of Ice, Freezing Rain and sub-freezing temps for every race date.
Even Saturday night kept up to par so far for the series with the temps below the freezing mark once again.
Perhaps the next three rounds will see improved weather for us.
Thanks for you input. I was unaware our web person had not changed that TBA on the schedule. It was scheduled for Texas, however the rural road by the venue began construction so we moved it. I updated the schedule this morning.
The print ad we run in OKC runs $1,200 for a weekday and $1,800 for a weekend if we run all of OKC. In one zone we run it runs around $250 for weekday and $400 for Sunday.
Tulsa World is run by the OKC paper now I believe as we have to send all our sports press releases to OKC for publication in the Tulsa World now.
Majority of the time it seems to be just a trade off with advertising costs vrs returns. Feels like you are giving the radio stations and papers a couple of grand for equal ticket sales.
Few times I have done zero advertising and had about the same numbers through both gates, and did not spend additional funds making the bottom line come up.
I just feel like we did not do our jobs to 100% potential if we have any empty seats or any empty spots on the starting grids.
I used free web sites fro year, but costs are coming down considerably. You can buy a domain name and host a site for under $50 a year now. Check out godaddy.com (largest registrar) or forum sponsors tulsaconnect.
While similar to changing a phone number or address, you can keep the old site up redirecting people to "outlawwinternationals.com" for as long as you want. Sponsors would also be very happy if you had a (at least semi)catchy website with their logos on it to help justify their $$.
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Originally posted by AMP
Tulsa World is run by the OKC paper now I believe as we have to send all our sports press releases to OKC for publication in the Tulsa World now.
That's a new one to me. As far as I know, the World is still owned/operated by the Lorton family of Tulsa and their World Publishing Corporation. The OKC Oklahoman is owned by the Gaylord family and their media/entertainment conglomerate. Anyone know why he has to send press releases to OKC for publication in the Tulsa World? Must be some sort of newspaper clearinghouse that collects press releases on OK news for state newspapers.
I don't believe a domain name is that important to us as google and other search engines bring us up just as easy with a search of the name. I may be wrong on this.
See where most charge $29.95 per Month for hosting. That is $3,595 in 10 years.
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Originally posted by AMP
I don't believe a domain name is that important to us as google and other search engines bring us up just as easy with a search of the name. I may be wrong on this.
See where most charge $29.95 per Month for hosting. That is $3,595 in 10 years.
Would cost $45.07 to register the domain name and pay for a year of hosting from godaddy.
The domain name is important because it is easier to remember, put on flyers, and for word-of-mouth communication.
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Originally posted by recyclemichael
I also didn't like that the newspaper had a sticky coupon. Newspaper recycling revenue is the backbone of my recycling program and the sticker and glue are contaminants to normally clean newsprint. The glue they used was very light, but I have seen other times when it would potentially mess up the recyclability of the paper.
Sticky Note ads on the cover of the Tulsa World are availible anytime, but are quite expensive.
quote:
Originally posted by recyclemichael
I also didn't like that the newspaper had a sticky coupon. Newspaper recycling revenue is the backbone of my recycling program and the sticker and glue are contaminants to normally clean newsprint. The glue they used was very light, but I have seen other times when it would potentially mess up the recyclability of the paper.
Does that mean you need to use the coupon, before you recycle? If so, I'll volunteer to help clean up this part of the mess...
What else should be removed? Newspapers contain a lot more than newsprint these days...
We don't like the plastic bags either. Almost everything that comes with the regular paper is OK. The advertisement slick pages are OK.
At M.e.t. centers we have three different paper bins... one for newspaper, one for magazines, and one for everything else paper (copier paper, bags, envelopes, file folders, etc.)
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Originally posted by recyclemichael
We don't like the plastic bags either. Almost everything that comes with the regular paper is OK. The advertisement slick pages are OK.
At M.e.t. centers we have three different paper bins... one for newspaper, one for magazines, and one for everything else paper (copier paper, bags, envelopes, file folders, etc.)
The hate the yellow plastic bags too. They hold my paper together, but when my carrier throws the paper on my driveway, the bags almost always shred and tear. The paper still gets wet in the rain, even with the bag.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve
quote:
Originally posted by recyclemichael
We don't like the plastic bags either. Almost everything that comes with the regular paper is OK. The advertisement slick pages are OK.
At M.e.t. centers we have three different paper bins... one for newspaper, one for magazines, and one for everything else paper (copier paper, bags, envelopes, file folders, etc.)
The hate the yellow plastic bags too. They hold my paper together, but when my carrier throws the paper on my driveway, the bags almost always shred and tear. The paper still gets wet in the rain, even with the bag.
Carriers are supposed to throw bagged papers in the grass on days it is going to rain. When your paper does get wet due to a torn bag, call the world. The carriers become well motivated when you call.
AMP, be careful about circulation figures. Did they say they were distributing 432,000 coupons? Or is their "circulation" 432,000?
The area you describe as "zone 6" would be a population area of approximately 100,000-200,000 people.
Circulation is loosely defined by how many people read the "average" paper. Some publications take the actual distribution and multipy it by 4, with the assumption that four people read the average periodical or daily.
In my household only two people read any periodical and if it's one of my sailing or racing rags, only one person reads it. [;)]
Just my experience from when I raced was that we usually found out about out of town races from:
A) We'd raced at that track before or another track that promoter had bought a mailing list from someone else.
B) One of our suppliers would have an event poster or from posters at a track we already ran at on a regular basis.
C) Another racer would tell us about it
I usually brought anywhere from one to six additional pit pass or grand stand ticket buyers with me where ever I raced. Your events consist of fields filled with 99% of participants that the average person doesn't know of unless they follow that type of racing. Sure you've got "pro" classes, but let's be real, without going to any of the events, I don't have a clue who the top "pro" quad racers are. They aren't a household name like Tony Stewart which is going to get me excited enough to go to the races.
Emmett Hahn told me one time during the early years when he was promoting Creek County Speedway ('85 or '86) that he could market all he wanted to Sapulpa and Kellyville, and he could still count on 80% of the crowd being there because they knew a driver or drivers, not because they were looking for something to do and dropped in at random.
Not trying to tell you your business, but for the racing you are promoting, best bang for your buck is mailing lists from your previous race entries, and your powersports dealers. Racers will tell racers, and they will bring families and friends to cheer them on.
Yes, I use direct mail 2,000+ on our list from the past 5 years.
As with everything there are up and down sides. Mail is one of my big issues at times. Because we have youth entries that may or may not share the same last name as the person on the mail box/delivery schedule at that address we often get the stamp "Unknown" on mailers we send out.
I was wondering if the Unknown was stamped on there by the carrier, or at the Zip Code Post Office or at the Hub.
Asking at my post office I was told after the 911 Anthrax scare or some reason, the rules had changed and if a person at an address had not received mail prior to that mailing some computer program sent it to the Unknown stamp area to be marked on the letter.
The other problem is the 6 month window on change of addresses. Since three of our Series are Annual and have separate start up times and involve Arenacross, Dirt Track and Show entries if a participant has moved and reported a Change of Address more than six months prior to when we mail to them, the mail piece comes back with Unable to Forward "Forwarding time has expired". And you get no new address for that person.
Other problem is many times if the Street is not spelled correctly on the entry form, the letters are returned with No Such Address stamped on them.
Out of 2,000 mailers we typically get 650 returned and are unable to deliver them as the phone numbers become stale along with the mailing address.
I have a program that sends a single text message to over 1,000 cell phones on most carriers, with one click of my mouse. I believe that is the quickest, least expensive and most effective means of communication I have available today.
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Originally posted by sgrizzle
Carriers are supposed to throw bagged papers in the grass on days it is going to rain. When your paper does get wet due to a torn bag, call the world. The carriers become well motivated when you call.
I do, and in all fairness to my Tulsa World carrier, they usually do put my paper on the grass when it is raining. On some occasions though in the recent past, the paper is on the pavement in my driveway and water has soaked through the yellow bag, but the paper is still readable with a short period of "drying time." If the paper is a totally soggy wet mess, I do call World circulation and request a replacement. Usually arrives within 1 hour.
That or add more water, elmers glue paste and make some paper mache art.
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Originally posted by recyclemichael
Today's Tulsa World had a coupon for a free QT sandwich or wrap stuck on the top of the front page. I stopped by the store to pick up a fountain drink and saw the coupon on a stack of papers on the rack.
I bought the Tulsa World for fifty cents and had a $3.59 sandwich for free.
I tried the Triple Stack sandwich. It was cut diagonally into two wedges (the best foods are triangular in shape). The package was hard plastic (terrible environmental packaging) and the label said that the sandwich contained Ham, Turkey and Beef.
I finally used my World/QT sandwich coupon this afternoon about 4:00 PM at the QT at 31st & Sheridan. It was slim pickin's, either the Triple Stack or the Ranch Wrap. I chose the Triple Stack. Sort of a club sandwich without bacon on untoasted wheat bread.
Not too bad; the price was right! I agree, the packaging is a waste. I was surprised that I didn't have to pay sales tax; I expect on most coupon offers to still have to pay applicable sales tax.