You Can't Stumble Into Opportunity if You Don't Watch For It

Unlike the big crack in the sidewalk that you stumble over because you failed to look, the business opportunities that we tend to stumble into show up only when we take the time to watch for them. I made that point in part two of my new Hide and Speak series and now Mack Collier makes it at Marketing Profs Daily Fix.

Mack's post talks about the blog series being posted by Chris Thomas on his blog Pour Out:

Chris Thomas likes sandwiches. In particular, he likes the sandwiches at his local Which Wich sandwich shop. So much so that he decided to not only eat one of every 51 sandwiches the shop offers, but he's blogging the experience. And he's gotten his readers involved, before each installment, he will give his readers several different sandwiches, and ask them to tell him which one he should eat that day.

Why would someone write a series like this?

Why not?

Remember, there are customers out there who love you and who want to help evangelize for you...or at least there are if you're doing a good job of running your business.

Chris explains it this way:

I just love the place. I love the wiches. I love the house chips. I love the sweet tea. I love the ordering experience. I love that they encourage you to be creative with the back of your ordering bag. I love the brand.

What's interesting about this isn't simply that a consumer is out there promoting a growing sandwich chain...it's that the owners of the local store were smart enough to watch for opportunities.

When they noticed Chris coming in so frequently, they asked him what was up. When he explained his blog and his challenge, they responded by having a stamp made up that promotes Chris's blog and his review series and by stamping the package of every sandwich with it.

Absolutely brilliant. What a great way to reward a loyal customer and to piggy back your marketing efforts on a grassroots style campaign.

These are the moves that demonstrate social media marketing at its finest.

Now there's nothing about this story showing up on the Which Wich blog or in their news section yet, but you can hope that the owners of this chain are smart enough to embrace a wonderful consumer generated viral marketing campaign and to take this promotion national.

In the meantime, ask yourself an important question.

Are you paying enough attention to your customers to recognize an opportunity like this one? If you aren't, you'd better get moving.