Trying New Things

​It was National Cheeseburger Day this past Monday, and even though all these national days don’t mean much of anything, chances are good that you heard about it. And most likely you didn’t hear about it because you were celebrating with a parade downtown honoring the wonders of ground beef and cheese between a bun. Although if you were, please let me know where this happens so that I know where to be next September 18.

Instead, though, you probably heard about it because of how many businesses, from national franchises to local establishments, used it as a way to offer some deals for the day. And of course some of these were pretty simple – if you see somewhere says you can go out and have a burger and fries for $6.99, well, that can be enough to make you go since you didn’t want to cook dinner anyway. I did, however notice many of the national chains weren’t just offering a deal that you could walk in and get – you had to use their app – and there seemed to be a little business lesson in there.

It seems clear that if multiple places are offering deals if you use their app, this is because they want more people to use their app. And the reasons they would want people to do this are pretty clear, too, and the easiest one can be that it gives them access to customers all the time. There is clear value in being able to send an ad to something everyone is carrying in their pockets.

At the same time, though, one can understand reluctance among customers to embrace these apps. After all, it is not very difficult to walk into McDonald’s and order a burger and it is something we have been doing for a long time.. You’ll still get it in minutes. And then there is always the push-and-pull that comes with new tech, some of which takes off immediately, some of which takes longer to gain hold, and some of which never does.

But for business owners, you have to be willing to try new things, and you have to be willing to make some moves to get people to try them. Those 50-cent cheeseburgers may cost a business something in the short term, but it could also be the means for long-term gains. Overall, I would say this means don’t be afraid to try to offer new products (or new ways to get old products) when it could lead to an obvious good path. And heck, don’t even be afraid to do this by taking advantage of made-up holidays.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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