Ideas To Generate Sales On A Holiday (Even When Your Indoor Playground Is Closed!)
Oftentimes when we close our businesses in observance of a holiday, we assume that it means a pause in revenue as well.
However, in this article I want to challenge that belief and provide you with some inspiration on how you can generate sales EVEN while your doors are shut.
First, I highly recommend listening to Episode 26 of my podcast, The Profitable Play Podcast, in which I share a very specific strategy about creating a BUNDLE offer. There are many different reasons why I never recommend doing a flat-out percentage discount on packages or birthday parties. In that episode, I talk a lot about why discounting your services in that way can do a lot of long-term damage to your business and result in really disappointing sales.
Businesses everywhere on a holiday weekend are bound to be filling everyone's email inboxes with crazy discounts to capture their attention. Adding another one of those offers is just going to be white noise. Therefore, this is the perfect opportunity to put some thought into a bundle offer- so again, go back and listen to the episode I linked above!
Next, holidays are a great opportunity to promote a new founding offer for your memberships. Even if you've been offering memberships in your business, this could produce a large boost in numbers.
Essentially, a founding member offer is providing customers with a special incentive for signing up within a specific time frame EVEN if you already currently offer open-play memberships. For example, an incentive might be allowing them to lock in the current membership price for life or until they cancel their membership as a founding member.
You can also include more unique perks, like free coffee for their first 10 visits, or priority registration for events. You can get really creative here– it doesn't just have to revolve around price. For my Play Maker Society members, I have a full 5-part training on exactly how to craft, price, grow, and scale an indoor playground membership offer. If you’d like to unlock that training right now– you can get a free month of Play Maker Society membership when you become a Play Cafe Academy student for a limited time!
My favorite way to package a founding member offer is to create an exclusive rate for paying for the entire year of the membership upfront.
For example, if your annual membership is $500, you can take $50 off for the holiday weekend. Alternatively, you can add an additional incentive for signing up for a year in-full, where (in-addition to your normal membership perks) they receive something EXTRA like 10 free coffees or 10 bring-a-friend passes, or an exclusive mug with your logo and name on it.
Essentially, you want to provide enough of an incentive to make it worth it for your customers to sign up for the annual membership- while still keeping your offer profitable for your business!
I love encouraging annual memberships in this way, especially if you need a significant cash boost heading into the end of the year. Even if you haven’t had the grand opening of your indoor playground, or have never taken the time to explicitly broadcast your memberships, this can provide the perfect opportunity to do so! A tweak in your membership offer or a looming price range can STILL allow you to do a founding-member launch!
There are plenty of ways to generate a significant amount of revenue even when your doors are closed in observance of a holiday, beyond the ideas I detailed above. I challenge you to get creative and find what works for your community and business!
And if you haven’t created a membership program for your indoor playground business, I would encourage you to listen to a few of my favorite Profitable Play Podcast episodes. These episodes cover how to create a membership, offer how to make it really appealing, why you should focus on memberships, how to price your membership, and more. I’ll leave a list of those insightful episodes below!
About The Author
Michele Caruana
Play Cafe Academy Founder & Blog Author
I have over a decade of hands-on local business experience and tough lessons under my belt, and I am passionate about helping current and prospective play based business owners AVOID the same mistakes myself and SO many other business owner's make. Even though I have a Master's Degree in Economics and Years of Business and Marketing experience, it took me YEARS to "crack the code" and turn my Indoor Playground from an expensive hobby into a business-- and I want to get YOUR business get there in less time and with much less stress.
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