Chance pe Dance is a highly underrated phenomena. Google does it every now and then with Google Doodles (grabs free eyeballs/media coverage) and great companies always play the card rightly.
For instance, there is an auto strike in Bangalore today. And that defintely means discomfort to a lot of people.
The latest entrant to online cab booking space, Uber has dropped their rates by 75% for today!!
“So, on Monday, January 6th, from 00:00 hours until midnight, ALL UBER TRIPS WILL BE AT 75% LESS THAN REGULAR FARES. This one day 75% cut in fares is for all riders, Uber Newbies and Loyal Uberettos alike.
..Enjoy it, share it, and make sure if you see someone stranded you tell them about it. We’re excited to help support the people of Bangalore and we expect you to do the same with your fellow, stranded, Uber citizens! Please be courteous to your fellow Uber riders by not holding on to the cars for too long.[official blog]
What about the other travel startups?
Olacabs claims to have added 300 cars to it’s rental fleet (no offer though). But others aren’t even running any custom offer – for them, this day doesn’t even exist.
Why is ‘Chance pe Dance’ so Important?
Because, today quite a few travelers will experience Uber/Ola for the first time ever.
Even when they (probaby) had no such plans to avail these services.
Thanks to the auto strike, the travelers are now being forced to look at options. But, hey! these companies (especially Uber with 75% discount) have given a you-cannot-miss-this-offer and while what the post-buy experience is upto the company, they now have a customer.
And the customer acquisition cost? It’s negligible, as compared to the CAC otherwise, on a normal day. [Read : Groupon’s Onion Deal : The Economics].
There are a couple of things to be noted:
1. You need to be a community player to massively enjoy RoI on such custom offers when the opportunity arises.
By community player, I definitely mean engagement on social media, but importantly, being predictable. Being predictable is when the community knows that ‘you will be <running an offer> because <an event x> has occured’. For instance, we all expect Google to come up with interesting Doodles. We actually head to Google homepage to check out these doodles.
- We all expect Diwali/festive discount sales and we all have a few top brands in our mind from whom we expect the most friendly sales.
- We now expect Zoho to deploy more guerrilla marketing tactics during SalesForce conferences. Even SalesForce does.
That is, community starts expecting from you because you have been doing things (consistently).
You have been out there/talking to them and sticking your neck out. And because you are talking to them, they are listening to you.
Imagine a brand with no engagement creating a custom marketing campaign that lasts only a day!
2. There is a lot of data that one needs to process.
The marketing team’s handle on data plays an extremely crucial role in such ‘Chance pe Dance’ campaigns. Imagine, government declaring holiday for the next 4 days – how quickly can you design and execute a campaign (along with your support/infrastructure team)? That flexibility helps drive business, reach out to those who are looking for a solution.
Is Chance pe Dance Campaign Worth the Effort?
NO!
There is definitely a lot of effort that goes in creating a ‘Chance pe Dance’ campaign. Mainly because it involves breaking through the planned tasks to focus on an opportunity which has limited timeline (for e.g. 1 day of Bangalore auto strike).
How many people do you think will board Uber/Olacabs today? Maybe, a few 50-300 more?
Maybe, the right question is How many people do you think Uber/Ola will reach out to today? How many people will talk about them, today?
Atleast 3,000? Is it worth spending efforts for this number (instead, why not try Adsense, says the traditional marketer).
It’s worth it when your backend/data/design is totally in sync with marketing efforts. That is, you can create a custom campaign without $pending a lot of effort. And that’s extremely difficult for any company to orchestrate.
It’s worth it when you want the brand to stand out for something. It’s worth it when you expect your community to expect something from you.
And that’s why it’s worth trying out!
“Sometimes, we’re so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing. After all, the thinking goes, if we can’t be amazing all the time, better to reset the expectation to merely good. Which robs us of the ability to (sometimes) be amazing.
But amazing is what spreads.” {Seth Godin}
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