From Butch and Donna at Pastime in Hastings NE
3-2-1 Blast Off. It has a catchy name and is easy to explain. I love this open play idea because it seems to me it doesn't "cheapen" your open play rate the way $1.50 bowling does. You charge $3.00 the first game, $2.00 the second game and $1.00 for all additional games. This is for each individual, you don't charge a party of three that want to bowl one game each that way. The neat thing is it keeps some pricing integrity and it gives an incentive to bowl more. If they stay and Bowl more, they will probably eat and drink a little more. People tell me the vast majority of casual open play Bowlers bowl just one or two games each. Let's get them to stay longer.
New Bowler Coached Leagues
I don’t remember where I first heard this, but I still believe it is probably the best method for finding new bowlers. If you have open lanes late, (who doesn't’t these days) you make a flyer explaining this league, and then you go through your leagues and personally ask each bowler to try and find a team. Explain this is a “new Bowler League”. The existing league bowler that brings a new team will be the Captain and Coach and he or she will get to bowl in the new league for FREE. When they ask friends to join, the most common objection is “I don’t know how to bowl and I’ll be embarrassed” or the season is too long. Overcome the objection by making this a short season league and have your bowlers/recruiters explain that everyone else in the league is a new bowler and it is just a short, fun, learn to bowl league and I will be your coach. Maybe you could even give the prospective Captain/Coaches a few free passes so they can get a practice session for the new bowlers before the first night of league. If you have fun, you can join a regular league next season. The key to success in forming this league is personally asking bowlers to find a team and following up with them the following weeks. You can’t expect a piece of paper left on the score table to motivate people to go out and find new bowlers. Who doesn’t have 2 or three friends that aren’t league bowlers? Depending on your schedule I believe 3 or 4 man teams (with the captain as one member) is the right number, 5 man late leagues with new bowlers will probably run too late. Just imagine how many new bowlers you can get if just 5-10% of your customers go out and find you 2 or 3 bowlers each. This concept also works great with daytime Senior leagues as well. Remember seniors are the fastest growing demographic in the US and they need something to do in the daytime. Use this to start up another senior day league on a day with open lanes.
jayhawk
This Great and Fun promotion comes from Cynthia Thomas of Mission Bowl. She wanted to create a league for first time bowlers. Something short, easy and Fun. She calls it “Crazy 8’s”. The league gets 8 teams (4 person), bowls at 8 o’clock, lasts 8 weeks, she charges 8 bucks a night and 8 pins or more count as Strikes. Her first league filled pretty quickly by asking open play bowlers and giving them a flyer and the league had a blast. Her hope is to eventually move these new bowlers to traditional leagues and this is a great way to get them started. I have had at least 20 Proprietors call me to tell me they read this on our website and formed a league from it.
A twist on the Crazy 8’s league from John. A friend’s daughter asked about an idea for a fund-raiser league. She volunteered for the United Way here in Lawrence and she wanted to do a fund raiser for the local Humane Society shelter. I had just learned about the Crazy 8 League and I thought Dog Lover and then thought, dogs are K-9’s how about a Dog Lover K-9 League. 9 weeks, 9 bucks and 9 pins count as Strikes and 9 pounds of Dog Treats to the winning team. The Bowling Center then donates $1.50 per bowler per week to the local Animal Shelter. What town doesn’t have 50 dog lovers that could be talked into bowling with likeminded Dog Lovers? I bet you could even get some free exposure in the local newspaper or AM radio station. Help your community, our furry friends and at the same time increase exposure to our sport.
jayhawk
One of the more creative new ideas came from a customer in Eastern Missouri. He wanted to start a new 15 week “Banker/Bank teller League” in January. A young gal that worked for the bowling center said she had an idea and he let her run with it. She printed up the bank league flyer with all the details, but instead of mailing them out, this is what she did. She drove through every bank and satellite bank drive thru window in town. She put the flyer in the canister and pushed send and then drove off. She did the same exact thing the following week. The third week she called each branch and asked to speak to someone at the drive-thru window. Then she asked them if they had received the bowling league flyers and asked if they had a team formed. They all remembered the flyer and to make a long story short, they got 10 teams and the league expanded to 14 teams and followed up with a summer session also.
From Vickie at Gladstone Bowl
Vickie runs a weekly promotion on one of her rare slow nights in the fall where she charges open play bowlers a penny a pin. If a bowler shoots a 169 game you charge them $1.69 for the game. We have talked about calling it the Penny a Pin Challenge. You could try and add an incentive to get higher scores by adding a one time prize of a free t-shirt for a 200 game. Something like “I Shot 200 at Gladstone Bowl”. You would get some advertising and shirts are only about $6.25. Larry at RoyalCrest looked at this promotion and it gave him another idea in a different direction. On his deal, when you bowl 3 games at prime time full price, you get a gift certificate for a penny for every pin you knock over. If you have a 421 series you get a gift card for $4.21 that must be used in the following week.
Curtis in Peabody Kansas told me about an open play/beer promotion he started with great success. His beer distributor had been asking him to run a “.99 cent Natural Light Special” on one of his slow nights. He finally said he did it and that it was awesome. I asked him how many Natural Lites he sold and he said 6. I didn’t think that sounded very good but he explained he sold $200.00 more of his regular beer and by the third week of the special, he had a waiting list at 9:30 on Thursday night for lanes. He said people came in for the special and maybe one guy in the group drank Natty’s but the rest of the guys ordered their regular beer.
From Bob at Retro Bowl (LADIES NIGHT)
Bob went to a non-bowling marketing seminar in KC and the basic theme was “you have to give something away to get something in return”. He didn’t really agree with the concept but he decided to give one of their ideas a try. They had mentioned ladies night, so Bob decided to take a night they didn’t have any leagues and he ran a “Cosmic Bowling” special where ladies got free bowling and rental shoes. The first few weeks were awful but eventually, a few younger women started showing up. Not long after the ladies started taking advantage of the special, you can guess what happened: the guys started showing up. Before long they were showing up in massive numbers making Tuesday’s his best grossing night of the week. He said his bowling center is the hip place to be in north Kansas City on Tuesday night for the 18-30 crowd.