Some years ago, an Australian takeout pizza place used the Internet in an attempt to boost sales. Traffic was slow. Hardly anyone visited the site. The need for an increase in traffic was urgent.

If traditional online media planning had been used, banners and links would have been purchased and the URL added to the shop's phone-book entry. It might even have invested in some traditional ads.

The pizza place went a different route. Instead of spreading money between off- and online ads, it spent the entire budget on radio. The spots were simple but extremely effective. So effective, the restaurant's increased business caused most of the local competition to shut down.

How'd it do it?

Instead of offering discounts or merely promoting its URL, the pizza place's radio ads asked listeners to tear out all the pizza-restaurant pages from their yellow pages and bring them in. In return for the pages, customers received a free pizza of their choice and a sticker with the restaurant's URL.

Very clever!

Because the contact information for all the other pizza joints in town disappeared from customers' primary reference source, only one set of contact details was left in households that complied: the URL for the restaurant that dreamed up the promotion. That single outlet is now a franchise.

the whole story