Simon is marketing director for Bar B-Ria, an upscale barber shop experience for gentlemen in Bogota, Colombia. They offer everything from massages to haircuts to manicures and pedicures, and a bar full of top shelf liquor, including a new favorite rum, Zacapa from Guatemala. I’ll tell you what advice I had for the place upon appreciating their services and their commitment to guest experience. This is mostly tactical. There’s still something to learn from it.

Turn The Revenue Measure From “Dollars Per Day” into ” Dollars Per Guest”

Because the entire plan of Bar B-Ria is hinged around delivering excellent guest experiences, it dawned on me that measuring revenue by day instead of dollars-per-guest means that opportunities get lost. For instance, I love Zacapa rum. When I walk in the door, it should be one goal of the Bar B’Ria team to pour me a glass (and add to my bill). This is how places like Disney think. They work on delivering maximum guest experience, but they calculate on dollar-per-guest, as do cruise ships, as do many other hospitality experiences.

Build Relationship Databases

I recommended that Simon have each guest in a database that tells them my preferences all the way through. Do I like gel in my hair after the haircut? Do I want my massage hard or soft? Why shouldn’t everyone in the place know that upon my arrival? It’s going to benefit my experience, and it’s going to improve my perception of the service. You can do this easily with Google Docs, better with BatchBook.

Partner With Hotels

Simon needs my dollars. I’m a US guy in Colombia and the service he offers is premium-but-inexpensive by American standards. If I hadn’t had friends from Colombia, I’d have never heard of Bar B’Ria. The people of Colombia in general don’t know much about it yet, and the men here aren’t yet convinced that a $30 haircut is somehow better than a $4 haircut.

Hotels that cater to people from other countries or vacationers would be a great place to build a relationship with concierges, maybe even to sponsor/advertise. Simon could earn much more by building bridges between the places where people who can afford the experience are and into his establishment.

Until more folks come and see the value for themselves and use it to treat themselves.

Word of Mouth Referral Program

Simon would do well to give me a card upon leaving that offers someone a free drink or a scalp massage or something else. He should give me 3-5 per visit. Imagine the experience: I’m done with my massage and my haircut and my delicious rum, and I am about to leave the venue. Aren’t I going to go forth and spread the word? It’s the perfect opportunity. Should 3 of those people come in with my referral, I’d maybe get a small benefit back: my own free scalp massage, perhaps.

Little Things Add Up

Over all the various ideas I gave Simon, they weren’t immediate millions-makers. They are all experience-enhancing and tactical. They all relate to giving guest value that results in improved revenue and guest acquisition. None of what I talked about had to do with the web. That’s almost the easy part, right?

Your Ideas

What would you add to this, oh social media friends. Give a few ideas in the comments on what you’d do to amp up the social elements, and tell me how they’d help Simon. (I’ll share my ideas in the comments a day or so later.)

Good?

(Oh, and I found this video in Spanish about the venue, if you want more inspiration.

VERY special thanks to Carlos Pardo for help finding the link to the place, and for the hospitality he (and his amazing parents) showed me at their family home for dinner while in Bogota. (And ladies of Colombia: he’s single.)

A Strategy is the Path You Choose to Take

Before we dive in, just realize this: strategy is a word that’s rarely used properly. Check out Erika Andersen’s Being Strategic if you need more on the right way to think about strategy. If not, just accept that strategy just means “the best way I can think of to get to the goal.”

Strategies are flexible. People don’t realize this. If your goal is to land more sales, then making one decision and sticking to it is not likely going to be the best way to plan your blogging methods. For instance, if you decide to write about product features every post, and that doesn’t convert to sales, would you still do it? No. You’d adjust your strategy and try new content approaches.

With that all said, let’s go in a bit more.

Sample Goals to Start our Strategies

Here’s a quick list of some ways one could use a blog in alignment with business strategy:

• Customer Loyalty
• Product/Service education
• Lead Generation
• Organic Keyword Marketing Assistance (SEO/SEM)
• Entertainment
• Awareness
• Thought leadership
• Announcements

There are, obviously, many more ways to use blogs, but you get the picture. From these goals, we can devise strategies.

Blogging Strategies

• Customer Loyalty – make a “customer of the week” post. Write about and promote others.
• Product/Service education – write several how-to posts
• Lead Generation – write posts that attempt to move people to a conversion point.
• Organic Keyword Marketing Assistance (SEO/SEM) – write blog posts that help you rate better for the search terms that matter to you.
• Entertainment – create interesting posts that keep up people’s good will
• Awareness – write frequent posts that maybe dip into many of these categories, to try and keep people interested
• Thought Leadership – write posts that establish you or your leaders as credible industry voices with great value.
• Announcements – use the blog as a glorified press release engine.

Again. I could write another 12 strategies each for the above-mentioned, but that’s not the point. I’m illustrating ways you can think about strategies for your blogging. Let’s go another layer down.

Tactics to Consider

• Customer Loyalty – include pictures in every post. Link to the customer often.
• Product/Service education – build good category support. Use sharethis.com or similar.
• Lead Generation – make simple calls to action. Don’t confuse with too many links, pictures, or other distractions.
• Organic Keyword Marketing Assistance (SEO/SEM) – learn which keywords you want to rank for and blog accordingly. (I’m not very into this method).
• Entertainment – build cross-promotional efforts, like tying posts to facebook and friendfeed for more exposure. The name of the game is eyeballs.
• Awareness – find ways to share and distribute. Look for external sharing mechanisms. The more you can cross-pollenate the message without seeming spammy, the better.
• Thought leadership – empower your leader (whoever you choose) to share as much as possible with the community. Comments help this cause lots.
• Announcements – be concise, and be able to share as much as possible.

What Works For You?

One thing to never forget is that you should always discount anything I say by tempering it with the understanding of what works best for you. You might be having tons of success by writing huge posts with no visual breaks. Who knows? Go with what works for you.

If you want more about the mechanics blogging, here is my best advice about blogging. Some of that might help, too.

Was this useful to you? What else did you want to share with everyone about your own successes? What’s worked or not worked for you?

Photo credit Floyd Nelio