bwagy

A gift to take home.

A token to show their friends.

A reminder of how much they enjoyed your product.

I enjoyed this wine on a recent flight, St Hallett – Poachers Blend.  It was really good, so I read the label.

On the back you can see is a little tab that you can pull of the label.  It has the name of the wine and more information on the back.

Very neat – now I know which wine to get!  I didn’t check but they could take it one step further and on the back have a coupon (so only those that have taken it off find it) – 10% off if you buy in Duty Free once you jump off the plane.  Just a thought but I think they are already doing enough.

So why not give your customers a gift?

Creating a repetitive behaviour is a surefire way to solidify your product.

Yet how can you establish a new behaviour? Or remind your customers of it?

Slide your product back into their routine with freebies.  Give away a sample of your product in the right place at the right time.

Sell chewing gum? Give a stick of gum with every bill at a restaurant.  Create the routine of paying the bill and getting some gum.

Sell hand sanitiser? Have a free dispenser outside public toilets.  Remind consumers that they need your product.

Sell shoe nugget? Give away free samples with every pair of leather shoes sold.

Sell body wash? Give away samples at the gym.

The list goes on…. apply it to your industry.  The point I am making here is consumers often forget about your product – so give them a kind reminder.  They will appreciate it.

If you have target market X surely you should talk directly to them?

In all likelihood – yes.

However there is ALWAYS room to target the second tier.

Who influences this market? Who else do they interact with? Whose opinion do they pay attention to?

The best example of this is the most effective campaign in getting women in for cancer screening. Conversations were held with hairdressers whom were to then relay they conversations with their clients. By targeting this second tier they were able to reach their target audience in an effective manner.

The key here is to miss the same boat that your competition are taking ON PURPOSE!

Great engagement model when you do not have the capability to do so directly.

Easy – remember the adage that 64 people hear about a bad experience.

If you can go to the exact opposite emotive state but through a positive experience.  You are going to cut through the clutter to the same amount of people.

An example would be the Burger King Flame, $3.99 for a Whopper smelling perfume.  Sold out instantly.  Remarkable enough to cut the clutter.

So remember this, you are looking to leverage word of mouth to get this spread.  Each and every person has the potential to spread it indirectly to 64 people.  Now that’s why word of mouth can spread like fire.

Ok stay with me for a minute.

Marketing traditionally has meant to you, putting some advertising out, get your message in front of enough people, you convert a few to sales.  The return used to be enough to justify it.

However in a market where people are counting their pennies, you just aren’t getting the same return you used to.

Now organisations are going hey time to try something new.

Word of Mouth is on the tip of everyones tongue.

How do you stimulate word of mouth? Through action.  Actions that are worth talking about.  

Right so we have gone from advertising to action in all of 30 seconds.

Now how can you stimulate action? Through entrepreneurship.

Stimulate entrepreneurial traits in your employees, to try something new, perhaps it will make you a few more dollars but also send a message to the market.

Innovation, sales & marketing? Entrepreneurship is marketing. (And always has been).