Happy July 11th! Oh, you don’t celebrate 7/11? Well you should! As you probably could’ve guessed, July 11th is 7-Eleven’s birthday and each year on their birthday, they give away free 12oz Slurpees to customers. The reason I bring this up is because of how genius their marketing strategy is! Because their company name just happens to be a date, they can play off of it and do something that gets the word out about their company. Because 7-Eleven has a signature drink that’s only sold by their stores, it’s perfect to give that product away to customers because when people post about it on social media, etc., their followers will know exactly what the person is talking about and then when they find out that it’s FREE, you’d better believe they’ll be headed to your store ASAP. At the moderately low cost 7-Eleven incurs by giving away free 12 ounce Slurpees, 7-Eleven, in turn, gets themselves quite a lot of publicity and advertising, not to mention the majority of people that are very likely pick up a snack or fill their car up with gas while they’re at the store.

7/11 Day is actually not the only promotional event for the Slurpee that’s been done.

7-Eleven’s state-of-the-art Slurpee Marketing has included pins with images of the icy delight and phrases like “I Have Slurped” that appeared on folks in the late 60’s, and an MTV campaign focused on brain freezes for all of you “phat” kids from the early 90’s.

7‑Eleven is the world’s largest convenience store chain operating, franchising and licensing over 56,600 stores in 18 countries, with over 10,500 here in North America. Because 7-Eleven has built this kind of a reputation for itself, they obviously have a great brand recognition strategy. Let’s be real, it’s super easy to be driving along and spot those orange, green and red stripes and want to turn in for a quick snack and a Slurpee. In fact, roughly 25% of people in America live within a mile of a 7-Eleven location.

So you might be wondering how your small business can use this same strategy, right?

Well since not every company has the luxury of being able to have a signature product that most of the world knows about, let’s think smaller. Maybe you run a hardware store and it’s your store’s “birthday” in a few weeks. Try running a deal like “make a purchase and get an invite to our birthday where we’ll have bounce houses, cake, a barbecue and a drawing to win a $500 Visa gift card.” If you happen to own a specialty business that sells something unique, ask people to take a photo with your product and use your company hashtag on social media. You can check out our blog post for more ideas on how to ask customers for a review/post here.

A solid Brand Recognition Strategy is essential for any business and it’s always good to look at other companies who are doing things right to get ideas and inspiration from. I have another blog post coming soon that will further cover Brand Recognition and Commitment, so keep a look out for that!