My wife is a primary school teacher and she’s on Easter break. In school holidays, she looks for fun things to do. Guess what her number one request was?
“Take me shopping.”
That’s right, her number ONE request. Gents, you have to agree with me here – in situations like this, there’s only one thing you can do: comply.
This week we visited the super duper brand new shopping complex – the famous Westfield in London. Actually it was a really good day, and it rounded off perfectly with just one sole experience.
Pretzels.
Fifteen years ago, I went to Germany and I had a freshly baked pretzel. It was fantastic. Ten years ago, I had a pretzel at Disney World in Florida. It tasted like cardboard. This week I had a pretzel at Westfield in London. It was better than the one I had in Germany.
I was seriously impressed and it made my day. It was warm, soft, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.
Know what got me to part with £3 for a pretzel?
The Marketing
See the guy holding out a plate in the picture above? Yes, him. He was giving out little freshly-made pretzel pieces to try. I asked if the pretzel contained any dairy products or eggs (I follow a vegan diet, so only foods made from no animal products for me), and I was told that they only contained water, flour, yeast, and salt. So I tasted a piece of pretzel and knew I had to have a whole one there and then.
The Sale
Without hesitation I walked up to the queue, waited patiently (because British people patiently queue all day long), and voluntarily exchanged £6 for two pretzels. A salted one for me and a sweet (vanilla & sugar) one for my lady.
I gobbled it up and had a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Guess what I’m going to be looking out for every time I take my wife to Westfields for shopping? Mr Pretzels.
Lesson of the day
Give away something for free. Not only that, give away some of your BEST stuff for free to introduce (yes, I said introduce, not entice) your ideal customer to you, your business, your product, and your other products.
If possible, give away something that you can create tonnes of for very little cost, so that you can give it out to as many interested people as possible to introduce them to the wonders of what you have to offer.
“…but what if I don’t sell pretzels for a living?”
Whatever your product or service, your primary question should be:
“What can I give away at little-to-no cost to myself that would introduce my ideal prospective customer to my product?”
- if you are a plumber, give away a home-owner’s central heating resource pack with tips on simple checks and fixes you can do yourself before calling out a plumber
- if you are an optician, give a free eye test or consultation on the ideal type of frames for your face
- if you are a musician, give away the most popular track from your album
- if you are an author, give away the most compelling chapter of your book (+ the contents page to show what other chapters will be in the book)
- if you are a chocolatier, give away your most indulgent chocolate
You get the idea. Give away something that instantly appeals to someone who has never even heard of you before, but after experiencing your product through the free sample, they will become a loyal customer and ambassador of your brand for life.
In that ‘taster’ item, how can you demonstrate trust, reliability and great value for money? How can you best portray the great feedback that your current customers are giving about your product already?
By experiencing this one little thing that your prospective customer gets for free, you want them to immediately think: “I need to get one of those for myself RIGHT now!”
Pretzel anyone?
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