When you get noticed it makes it very easy for people to talk about you. Photo / 123RF
I was driving my car a few days ago when I saw something unusual that caught my attention.
It was a person walking on the footpath wearing a large cone on his head.
The cone appeared to be the standard cone used to indicate road works and was at least a metre tall.
I have no idea why a person would want to wear a road works cone on their head.
However I'm mentioning it because of the valuable marketing lesson this represents.
If you do something that is 'out of the ordinary' and unusual you tend to get noticed.
And when you get noticed it makes it very easy for people to talk about you.
The same principle applies in marketing your business.
If you get noticed in a positive way you can get a lot of people talking positively about your business to many of the people they know.
A very simple way to get noticed is to use the strategy of Added Value.
Here's a great example:
Marketing expert Mal Emery has bought and sold dozens of businesses and helps business owners to create massive increases in sales and profits.
When I interviewed him a few years ago, Mal explained that a great way to increase sales for any business is to use added value.
He told me how he did this with a coffee shop he owned many years ago.
When you bought a coffee Mal gave his clients a glass of iced soda water at no extra charge.
Now of course the clients' reaction was "I didn't order that, why am I getting that?"
Mal trained his staff to tell the story: "The free soda water is to cleanse your palate so every single time you take a sip of your coffee you get to taste that beautiful coffee again and again and again."
He also put a little chocolate on the side of the coffee cup and it was called Hasty Tasty and it had the name of the company, the coffee shop on the chocolate.
This was all added value.
What was the perceived value of this coffee?
Well back in those days it was $1.50 to have a coffee and when you added the soda water and a chocolate it was worth to the customer about $3.50. (However it only cost Mal a few cents to provide this extra added value.)
Now someone paid Mal $1.50 and they got $3.50's worth of value.
So who do you think they told?
They told all their friends. "You've got to come here, they give you a glass of iced soda water and a Hasty Tasty chocolate on the side" so his sales exploded.
He went from zero sales to $10,000 a week in five months and was able to sell this business for $230,000 by applying the principle of added value.
Added Value is a good idea you can borrow and use anywhere. The reason it works so well is simple. Everyone still likes a bargain; everyone wants a cocktail story to tell their friends of a great discovery they've made if you like.
The good news is that there are hundreds of simple things that any business can do to add amazing value to their customers and clients.
Many of these things are low cost and even free and can create remarkable increases in your sales.
"The way to a customer's heart is much more than a loyalty program. Making customer evangelists is about creating experiences worth talking about." - Valeria Maltoni
How could you use added value in your own business to get positively noticed?
- Graham McGregor is a Marketing Advisor and helps businesses who offer an expensive service to quickly attract ideal new clients. You can download his brand new 106 page marketing guide 'The Expensive Service Marketing Solution' at no charge from www.TheExpensiveServiceMarketingSolution.com
