Marketing eYe

a biztactics.com blog | by Ankesh Kothari

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Sneaky Way of Increasing Sales

How much popcorn can you eat if its served to you in a big tub?

Two food statistics for you:

Container size influences how much we eat: Moviegoers given five-day-old stale popcorn still ate 53% more if it was served in a big bucket than a small bucket.
We eat more if the evidence is removed: In a study of chicken-wing eaters, waitresses removed the bones from half the tables while letting them stack up on the other half. The diners who still had piles of bones on their plates ate 28% less.

Action Summary:

A sneaky way of increasing your sales is by simply providing shoppers with larger shopping carts.
A huge department store near my house has a very unique policy - no shopping carts. You evaluate/try on the products and ask the salesperson that you would like to buy it. The salesperson keeps that product aside and gives you a receipt. At the end, while checking out, you get your products when you make the payment. People usually end up buying more than they would have - because they don't have to carry the products around.

(Food statistics by the Big Picture blog)

Labels: Food statistics, Shopping Cart

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Posted on 1/23/2007 | Permalink | |

Three Rules of Product Packaging

Which Deep Clean product would you buy - when they all look the same?

Branding Alchemist Steven Diebold recently made a post on his blog about his experience at the supermarket. He was looking to buy a skin care product. Came to the Neutrogena aisle and spent the next 10 minutes getting totally confused.

He ound five different Neutrogena products - but they all looked the same! He checked the ingredients on the package. But the only difference between the more expensive $6.39 product and the $4.79 less expensive one was something called - Beta Hydroxy. Like me and you, Steven had no clue what that ingredient did either!

So what did he do? He ended up buying the lower priced $4.79 product!

Who can guess how much money Neutrogena's lost because of bad packaging?! The rules for good packaging are simple, yet most companies screw it up. They spend all their time in making the product better. And lose all the clients because of poor product packaging,

Three Rules of Product Packaging

1. Make Your Product "Look" Different & Attractive.

The key idea: make good use of colours. Colours can visually diferentiate your product from others. If you have 5 different products, give them 5 different colours.

Companies like Herbal Essences have got this part right.

Another thing you could do is try some whacky visual ideas.

A sunglasses manufacturer went after the sports market by packaging his sunglasses in tennis ball cans! Seth Godin packaged his book in milk cartons!

Such outrageously different packaging can not only set your product apart from others but also help you create a buzz.

2. Use the Right Words

You'll be surprised to know how many people pick up the product and read the packaging before they decide whether they should buy it or not. And two things inluence their buying decisions:

a. What's in it for them?

Why should they buy your product? How is your product better than other products? What is your unique selling feature?

An easy way to answer this question:

i. Mention your offer / benefits
ii. Mention how you take care of the downside (if you offer any sort of guarantee)
iii. Don't mention anything else

For eg: Rejuvinate your dry hair with just 2 drops of sunflower oil

b. Ingredients / How to Use Information

Ingredients read like a whole other language. If you make it easy for people to understand why the ingredients you use are good for them, they'll buy.

Vitamin Water is a good example of explaining the ingredients to make the sale.

Click on the picture to enlarge

3. Build a Database

This is an advanced step. Use your packaging to make future sales. Note down how people can contact you and give you feedback.

Or even better, give them a website address where they can get a free report of tips and tricks. Or a coupon for future discount.

Enroll your users into a mailing list so that you can follow up with them in the future and make more sales.

Labels: Database marketing, Herbal Essences, Neutrogena, Packaging, Steven Diebold, Vitamin Water

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Posted on 1/09/2007 | Permalink | |

Beamvertising

A chewing gum company in Holland known as SportLife projected moving pictures of a skateboarder on outer walls of buildings in various cities in Netherland!

They placed the projector in a van and drove the van through the streets - while the projector showed a person skateboarding on the walls. Their campaign received a lot of attention from pedestrians and other drivers.

You can watch a 44 second video of the campaign on youtube

Labels: Ad projection, Beamvertising, Chewing Gum, Guerilla Marketing, Holland, Sportslife

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Posted on 1/02/2007 | Permalink | |

DVD Gift Cards

New Gift Cards that turn into DVDs

This holiday season, Circuit City came up with a new generation gift cards.

The card has a traditional rectangle shape - but drop it in the computer's disk drive tray and it works as a DVD.

"It includes a snowball-fight video game in which your character gives up and makes snow angels when it loses, as well as an offer for 50 free downloads from eMusic, holiday screensavers, wallpaper and printable gift labels."

photo by Circuit City

Labels: Circuit City, Gift Cards

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Posted on 1/02/2007 | Permalink | |

Scentvertising

New Technology is finally allowing marketes use the power of smell to sell more products.

1. Scent in an ice cream shop

Emack & Bolio's - an ice cream chain - experimented by using the scent of waffle-cones in one of their outlets. Their sales jumped by 33%!

They used ScentAir.com's $100 a month equipment to spread the scent all around their shop.

2. Scent at the bus stop

Via TrendHunter: "Familiar with the “Got Milk?” ads? The people at Arcade Marketing just took the ad campaign to a new level. Using a new technology called “Magniscent” they made scented bus shelters. “what goes better with chocolate chip cookies than a big glass of cold milk?” The idea was to attract people’s attention using the scent which is emitted from a special adhesive strips that has the aroma of chocolate chip cookies. Great smelling bus shelters are the new trend!"

Labels: Arcade Marketing, Emack and Bolios, Got Milk, Magniscent, Scent, ScentAir, Scentvertising, Smell Advertising

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Posted on 12/15/2006 | Permalink | |

Voyeur Ads

Instead of dropping off fliers and leaflets that get discarded, marketers are starting to stick "peep hole" voyeur ads.

Papa Johns attaches a sticker over the peep hole that shows a pizza delivery guy with their phone number!

German catalog company Otto uses a sticker with a model holding their catalog. They however showcase their phone numbers at the back of the sticker instead of the front side.

(The back side reads "The new Otto Catalogue has arrived. Order now xxxx-xxx xx")

Via: Adverblog

Labels: Otto Catalog, Papa Johns, Peephole ads, Voyeur Ads

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Posted on 12/15/2006 | Permalink | |

Guerilla Promotion with Props

A friend sent me an email with the above picture. Those are handles in the bus that people catch onto so that they don't fall. Ain't it a great promotion idea?

Use props and make a big impact.

Further reading: Marketing with Props

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Posted on 8/14/2006 | Permalink | |

Passion: Do you need it?

Passion Personified - Crazy Soccer Fans

I've heard it a 1001 times. All the entrepreneurial "start-a-business" books talk about it.

"Start your own business by identifying your passion in life."
"You'll only succeed if you are passionate about your business and its purpose."
"Don't start a business on a topic you are not passionate about, or you'll never be happy. "

My view? I think people have it upside down.

Passion shouldn't be the cause of your business. It should be the effect.

Let me explain.

People don't get passionate about a sport or a team and then start watching it. No. They first start watching the sport and then they get passionate about it.

I remember going to my first football game in America a few years back. I didn't go to watch the game because I was passionate about it. Heck - I didn't even know all the rules of the game. But you should have seen me cheering and shouting in the stadium. I was as excited in the crowd as everyone else. Because I went to see the game, I got passionate.

Passion stems from commitment.

Ask any writer.

If a writer waited for passion and inspiration to come before she starts writing, she'll never finish her book.

But once she sits down and commits herself to write, passion and inspiration comes on its own.

If you wait for passion to show up before you act, you'll never move far. If you are committed enough to a business or a cause, passion will come automatically.

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Posted on 6/25/2006 | Permalink | |

Hand Stamp Advertising

Hand stamps at Enigma, Bombay

Enigma, a nightclub in Bombay stamps people's hands with a social service message before they enter. The message: "Don't drink and drive. Call a cab. [phone number]."

Master researcher and my friend Phil says that there is a company which actually facilitates hand stamp advertising in Australia. Check out their website:

Passout Marketing (Flash required)

Its an idea you can steal if you sell to the young crowd. Approach the local disc. And ask them if they'll allow you to change their hand stamps with your ad for a fee. All you'll need is a special rubber stamp with your message on it and ink - and the first thing people will see after a hard night of partying is your ad.

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Posted on 6/12/2006 | Permalink | |

Darwin's Secret to Success

Charles Darwin: evolved out of a monkey.

From a recent article in Psychology Today...

"For two decades, Charles Darwin suffered crippling anxiety whenever he so much as imagined publishing his theory of natural selection. The quiet naturalist agonized about how his true beliefs on speciation would affect his standing among his Victorian peers and super pious wife: "It is like confessing a murder," he wrote to a friend.

Only when the young scientist Alfred Russel Wallace nipped at his heels with a nearly identical theory did Darwin set aside his work on barnacles and publish On the Origin of Species, securing his place in history with the slenderest of leads.

The greatest thinker of the 19th century came close to being remembered as a footnote in the study of arthropods, solely because he feared disapproval."

Wow. Isn't that scary? How many times have you though: "what will my friends and family think of me if I do this?" How many times have you allowed the fear of your social standing stop you from taking action?

If you let fear control you, you'll remain mediocre (sic).

The solution, as Darwin forcefully found out, is simple: Benchmarking.

By observing someone who is actually taking action, your fears will wither away - and you'll start taking action too. Because nothing is better in inspiring you to take action than seeing a competitor getting ahead while you lag behind.

Question: How did Toyota become one of the biggest car manufacturers today? Answer: a few years back, their entire mission statement was 2 words long: "Beat GM."

What is your get-off-your-ass-and-take-action mission statement?
Beat _______

Action Summary:

Mark out a competitor. Observe her. Learn her ways. And then decide to be better than her in "everything" she does.

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Posted on 6/06/2006 | Permalink | |

Marketing for a Marketing Firm

Some of you know it. Some don't. I've moved countries. I'm back in my home town - Bombay, India.

Am opening a new marketing agency over here. And am blogging about how I'm going to market my marketing agency!

First post from my new blog:

How does a marketer market his new marketing agency?

If you would like to know the answer to that, stick around with me. I'll be narrating my experiences of opening a marketing agency in Mumbai, India - where many small businesses don't think marketing is necessary - that if the product is good, the public will come!

You'll read about my frustations, breakthroughs, eureka moments, $%^& curses (edited to keep this blog clean) and just about everything I do to market my own marketing agency.

As the saying goes "Fools learn from experience. Sages learn from history."

Here is your chance to learn from my experiences of starting and marketing a new firm on a shoestring budget!

kind regards from warm Bombay,
- Ankesh Kothari

Go over to that blog to read a new post about "Business Plans."

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Posted on 1/21/2006 | Permalink | |

Reflections 2005

"The further backward you look, the further forward you can see." - Winston Churchill

This post is a reflection of what I learnt in 2005.

1. "Rich people have large libraries, poor people have large TV's" - Dan S. Kennedy

This year, I did the unthinkable. I got rid of my TV! Well, it worked for 2 weeks and then the football season started.

Even though the TV is back, the amount of time it stays on is down drastically. No soaps. No news. No reality TV. The only time its on now is during games, if some wicked show is on on history or pbs channel, a good movie on weekends or during the late night TV infomercials. A guilty pleasure is watching Comedy Central too sometimes.

But how did a regular TV "crap" watcher change his habits and start watching good TV? Simple: lose the remote. Hide your remote and you too will start watching less and good TV. So much of nothing comes on TV that you won't go through the trouble of getting up, walking to your TV and switching channels every 3 minutes.

No TV has improved my productivity a lot! It gave me more reading time. So what did I actually read?

2. "If I show up at your house 10 years from now, and find nothing in your living room but Reader's Digests, nothing in your bedroom but the latest Dan Brown novel... I will chase you down to the end of your driveway and back shouting 'Where are the damn books?... Why are you living the mental equivalent of a Kraft Macaroni & Cheese life?'" - Stephen King

The year started off with a lot of junk reading. But midway through 2005, I kicked off many of my poor reading habits.

No news. I stopped reading newspapers totally. And haven't missed a thing. The papers cover things which will never affect you - and you can never affect them news either. How a celebrity was caught cheating is worthless for you to know.

But what about news that can really affect you? Like natural disaster warnings? If its a news story that will affect you, you will hear about it from your friends. Sometimes even before the newspapers cover them.

I cut down on my blog reading too. Its a lot of bs to read to get through a few golden gems.

Instead, I read more magazines. Business 2.0 is my current favourite biz magazine. Sciam Mind is my fav non-biz magazine. And then I read more research papers (especially on topics of "attention" and "discipline"). They are very hard to read - a lot of big boring words (covering interesting topics). But hardly anyone reads them, so I get an edge over other people - arming myself with powerful information that no one else knows about.

3.a. "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan." - Eleanor Roosevelt

3.b. "Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan." - Tom Landry

This year saw me finding a lot of discipline in getting things done. I might be the most disorganized person out there... my desks always a mess. I read 3-4 books together. And I pile up work.

This year, I strived to change all that. Curiousity took me to venture into learning about other peoples systems of planning and organizing. Most of what I came across is junk. Using expensive softwares is no way to go.

My planning is done on a piece of paper. Using mind maps. Following it with a detailed list that covers finance, production and marketing. I might tell you about my simple planning process sometime later.

And then I spent a lot of time finding hacks and simple systems that force me to get my plans implemented. Reading research on self-discipline and the human mind gave me insights that hardly any of those self help gurus know.

Here are some of the simple hacks.

Action Summary:

Sit down for an evening and make a rough plan. Nothing fancy. Pick up a pen and paper and write what you'll have to do to improve your health, wisdom, wealth and happiness in the coming year.
Watch less TV. Get rid of your remote.
Instead, read more books. Read things that others don't.

Read my 2004 reflections (This could turn into a cool tradition!)

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Posted on 1/02/2006 | Permalink | |

Packaging Trick

Can you guess if people drink more from
tall glasses or the fat glasses?

Brian Wansink of Cornell University runs a behavioral experiment on 198 adults and 86 bartenders. Both group of people are given two glasses: one fat tumbler glass and one tall highball glass. Both these glasses - though differ in shape - can hold the same amount of liquid of 11 ounces.

Brian then asks both the groups of people to pour in 1.5 ounce of liquid from a vodka bottle into both the glasses without using shot glasses or any other sort of measurement tools. And he finds an interesting quirk:

People fill in 20-30% more liquid in the fat glasses than the tall ones! (198 adults pour 2 ounces in the fat tumblers and right about 1.5 ounces in the tall highballs. The more experienced bartenders don't do much better - pouring 1.8 ounces in fat glasses and 1.5 ounces in tall ones.)

So whats this research got to do with marketing?

If you are in the liquid selling business (perfumes, shampoos, soft & hard drinks) you can earn more money by simply making your bottles longer.

If you don't sell any liquids, this research still helps a lot. It shows that peoples perception is a very important factor in getting them to buy and use your products. And perception lies in details.

The size of glass or bottles can affect peoples perception of the value of a product. You might have the same quantity of exactly same tasting vodka in both the bottles, yet people will opt to buy the taller bottles - because they think that it contains more vodka than the fatter bottle!

Similarly, the length of your store aisles, the colour of your paper or plastic bags, the smell at your door step or any other detail can change peoples perception of your actual product.

Pay attention to the details! Mystery shop at your stores to see how it feels like to be one of your clients. Experience the details your clients will experience buying from you.

Here is a small list that can get you started in fixing your details to change peoples perception of your product:

Size
Shape
Colour
Font
Weight
Height
Smell
Feel-to-touch
Music
Taste
Temperature of your store
Cleanliness
Proximity of other products

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