heh. Made me think of Support The Municipality! Don’t forget, we’re on to you.
And you cannot ask Netflix “hey, do you have that movie? You know, that movie with that one guy…” and have the slightest prayer of success. And sure, your brick-and-mortar concierge du cinéma may roll his eyes behind your hirsute back, but what do you care when you can stroll home with a bag of overpriced caramel popcorn in one fist and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector in the other?
We used to do it for the audiobook store I worked at. It was almost exactly like Netflix’s plan; pay periodically for a certain number of books out at one time, unlimited per month. I think the only reason it didn’t work better than it did, and it worked pretty well, was that we had this huge matrix of prices depending on how many books you wanted at one time and for how big a chunk of time you wanted to pay for up front. Probably looked intimidating to potential subscribers.
I think a subscription model would be perfect for a local store. Blockbuster’s not doing so hot, but IMO that’s because it’s corporation vs corporation, and nobody cares about that. But if you’ve got a rental plan that’s just as accessible as Netflix’s, plus you have the immediacy advantage, plus you’re local, you’ll likely wind up with a hardcore loyal base of customers that’ll be hard to lose. (One of my favorite things to do on a Friday night when I lived in my last home was to order Chinese, walk down to the Blockbuster to grab a movie and pick up the Chinese in the same shopping center, and I hate Blockbuster. If it was a good indy store, I might never have moved.)
I think the window sign in the OP stinks, but that’s not news by now.
What you REALLY need is some market research.
There are places out there where you can do your own market research. Zoomerang.com is good (disclosure - I work for the company that owns Zoomerang). Surveymonkey is a competitor to Zoomerang if you wish to check that out.
There are ways to try to figure out where you are weak/Netflix is strong and vice versa. This would give you real data to figure out what buttons to push to make your store more attractive.
Also, I am not trying to drum up business for myself as I am offering for free…if you need help knowing what questions to ask and how to analyze the data, let me know. I do this stuff everyday and would be happy to help out a fellow Doper.
Seriously look into this. Zoomerang and Surveymonkey are new to the marketplace and allow small business to cheaply do market research that was only reserved for large companies in the past.
Kewl! Do you work in advertising?
I dunno, I get a creepy, kind of authoritarian vibve from that sign.
Note that even the Netflix model of mailing out actual DVDs is eventually going to be replaced by the video on demand model, where the movies are downloaded to a computer, set-top box or even the TV itself. Whether that eliminates actual DVD rental (either locally or through the mail) may depend on whether the VOD model lets you see everything or just the new stuff.
I’m not convinced Netflix will put brick-and-mortar video rentals out of business. Not all of us have credit cards, ya know. Plus, not all of us want to wait for our video selections.
Friends with anyone at a local paper? See if they’ll do a story on this (of course, it’ll come off as a bit bleak ‘NetFlix Hurts Small Business Owners,’ but you’re right, it is something that many people don’t consider).
Site is blocked. You know, could it hurt you to just freaken tell us what the fucking sign sez?
:mad:
Anyway, the reasons why Netflix is doing so well are:
No late fees. Do you have them?
Really large selection, not just the newest hot release.
Note that I am not a Netflix user.
lissener,
I think you should run a promotion where if people can ask you a trivia question about a movie and you can’t answer it, they get it for free.
One, you’ll be giving away very few rentals.
Two, it will bring people to the store.
Three, it will bring the huge benefit of interacting with a knowledgeable staff person in real time which you don’t get with Netflix.
Well, not Netflix itself, but Netflix is on the Internet, and the Internet also has IMDb, and IMDb is practically made for answering this kind of question.
-Kris
Actually, a sign vaguely along these lines could be funny.
FREE FULLY-ARMED and
OPERATIONAL BATTLESTATION
with EVERY RENTAL
And then have some funny small print like “must be James Earl Jones to qualify” or something like that.
Or perhaps “Rent from us, or we’ll kill Kenny (or Bambi, if you want to really get attention)”
I’d be careful of claiming your place is the only option for getting a movie OMGRIGHTNOW! Because, well, it’s not true. There’s Netflix Watch Now, Hulu, cable on-demand, iTunes, etc, and those are just the legal options. Granted, not everyone might be aware of those options or willing to use them, but to those of us who do and are, it makes you look old-fashioned and out of touch (IMO).
True, and they’re infinitely useful—but IMDb (and Netflix’s own search feature) generally require at least knowledge of a movie title, name of an actor or director, etc., whereas your friendly neighborhood movie geek can use his encyclopedic knowledge to identify “that movie with the one guy, I think he’s French? And he wakes up and everybody’s got a pumpkin for a head? It has that song by that one band, the one that goes na na na na na na…”
Anyway, I use Netflix and we don’t have any local stores left except Blockbuster.
Is that a fictional or real movie?
-FrL-
FWIW I am another one who prefers the first draft of the sign over the one linked to in the OP but since the sense of the thread seems to be you now aren’t going to use either one I guess that doesn’t matter.
I make a specific point of patronizing the locally owned businesses in the small town I live in. As a homeowner and taxpayer I much prefer thriving businesses to empty storefronts that would attract graffiti, vandalism and potentially burn down and threaten other nearby businesses. Also thriving businesses raise the local rents, which raise property values and mean more taxes coming in to the town which hopefully means my tax burden will be lower than it otherwise would be.
I don’t have any specific suggestions but I hope things work out for your store lissener, three video rental places near me have gone out of business in the last year although my regular place still seems to be doing OK.
It’s happening faster than I thought. The last Xbox update added Netflix streaming, and just yesterday, the new release of Boxee also added the service as well. So now, thanks to free software updates, every TV in my house has some way to stream Netflix using the “Watch Instantly” feature. And I’m not paying anything above and beyond the Netflix subscription I already had.
Lissener, you’re making one of the fundamental mistakes of marketing in your OP. You’re basing a campaign on why you want people to be your customers. They may be good reasons but you’re selling the wrong idea. You need the give the reasons why people would want to be your customers.
Several people have already pointed out one of the main advantages video store rental has over online rental: immediate gratification - you can walk out of a store with the movie you wanted and watch it right away. You should emphasize this point.
You also have the potential advantage of in-store staff. This may or may not be an advantage depending on whether the public likes the staff.
You also can cater to impulse rentals. People can browse the shelves and find a movie to watch they didn’t know existed.
This sort of sign would be MUCH more likely to lure me into a local shop than your original one Lissener.
My personal reason for choosing NetFlix rather than local stores is that if I feel like seeing, say, the 1936 Showboat, I’d put it at the top of my queue and poof I’d have it in a few days. The stores near me tend to have a “classics” selection that’s oh–30 or 40 movies big and have 50 of Adam Sandler’s latest offering though. And that’s fine–obviously that’s a model that works for them but for me, I’d rather wait for the movie I wanted than go to a local shop and simply not get the movie at all. If you have a large and/or unusual selection, maybe you can work that into another line like the one above.
I agree this is one of the most important things to emphasize.
Being the downer I am, though, I must say, I don’t think this is that important to most people. I’d bet most people walk into a store having only a vague idea at best what movie they want to walk out with.
Though Netflix doesn’t let you do this completely impulsively, I can attest that Netflix has a pretty good share already of the “find a good movie you didnt know existed” market.
-FrL-