This is probably not going to come as a big shock to you, but there’s not a lot happening on a Monday night in Rotherham. Which is why I found myself heading up the M1 to see Tommy Steele (No, you’re wrong…he’s still alive) in Doctor Dolittle at the Leeds Grand. 

I can heartily recommend both the show and the theatre ~ a fantastic characterful venue, and a great family production. Tommy Steele is excellent, but you do have cause to wonder (or at least I do) what motivates someone like him to be spending a freezing cold March evening in Leeds. 

He must be the living embodiment of what I’ve been banging on about for ages…when you find what you’re really meant to do for a living, you’d rather be doing it than just about anything else. And you’ll continue doing it long after the financial need has passed. Not that I have any insider knowledge on Mr Steele’s financial situation, you understand!

Anyway, I gather the show was great. It gets my recommendation. 

What doesn’t get my recommendation though, is the coach we travelled in. Now normally, there’s no way you’d get me on a coach. But it was a trip organised by my daughter’s school, and she wanted us to go on the coach. So we did. It’s only a 50-minute journey. How bad could it be? Hmmm… 

What I didn’t know until I got on, was that this was no ordinary coach. It was one specifically designed for transporting small humans…kids. I didn’t even know they made such things, so I learned something there. Anyway, all the seats were child-sized, and although I’m not what you’d call large ~ now how can I put this politely?… 

I found that I’d got a lot more arse than seat. 

Naturally, I moaned and grumbled all the way there, and most of the way back. It was so uncomfortable. And then I realised something ~ this must be how it is for grossly overweight people all the time. But you just don’t realise until you’ve experienced it. If you want to understand something completely, being told about it or reading about it is no substitute for experiencing it first-hand. 

Method actors know this of course, which is why when they’re preparing for a part, they often put themselves in the position of the person they’re about to portray. They know that it’s not enough to learn about the person, they have to actually feel like them. It’s only then that true understanding comes. 

And it’s exactly the same in the
tawdry business of selling stuff… 

Some of most compelling sales messages I’ve created have come because I’ve been able to completely empathise with the potential customers for the product or service. You see, I’ve been in exactly their position. I’ve felt what they’ve felt. I’ve had the same pain, the same doubts, the same anxieties, the same goals ~ the same everything… 

And when you’ve done that, it makes it so much easier to craft a message that will appeal. The reason is simple: if it appeals to you, it will appeal to them. 

If you’ve only heard, or read about, the problem your product or service solves, second-hand, you’re detached from the emotion. And it’s the emotion that sells. The closer you can get to experiencing the raw emotional appeal of your offering (or the problem it solves) at first-hand, the more powerful will be your sales message. 

It’s not method acting…it’s method marketing! 

Before this trip, if I’d been asked to write an advertisement for a diet product, I would have focussed exclusively on the health and cosmetic benefits. The problems of living in a world built for people half your size wouldn’t really have occurred to me, and even if it had, I don’t think I’d have thought it very important… 

Now I know better…and I have the
painful buttocks to prove it.  

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE 

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Best Wishes

John Harrison 

In 2007, ‘music-to-slit-your-wrists-to’ exponents, Radiohead, carried out a massive marketing experiment. They released their latest album via Internet download – but with a twist… 

Buyers were invited to pay as much or as little as they liked for the album. They were asked to pay what they thought it was worth. 

There seems to be a fair amount of controversy over the results, but the best estimate I can come up with is that about 1.2 million people downloaded the album, 62% paid nothing at all, and the average price paid was around $6. 

Given that their product cost was virtually nothing (although there would have been administrative costs) and they didn’t have to share the money with distributors, record companies or retailers, that surely must go down as a big success…Even though only 38% of customers paid anything at all. 

Fast forward to last week, and I heard about another marketing experiment along similar lines – but with a very different outcome. 

A restaurant in London attempted pretty much the same thing. There were no prices on the menu, and diners were invited to pay what they thought the meal was worth. Customers hated the whole concept, and spent the entire meal worrying about how much they should pay. They were fearful of paying too little, and looking mean ~ or too much, and looking stupid. Nobody wanted to go back. 

This is a classic case of taking a marketing idea from one environment and dumping it in another, without thinking through how the new environment will impact on the effectiveness of the technique. It’s worth looking at the two factors that turned a winner into a loser here: 

1.  Proximity. With a music download, the transaction
     is remote. There’s no human interaction, and hence no
     embarrassment factor. If buyers had to hand over the
     money to a band member (as they do to a restaurant
     employee), the result would have been very different. 

2.  Costs. With the music download, there are no cost
     implications to attracting freeloaders and skinflint
     customers. In a restaurant, the implications are serious
     because there’s considerable product and service costs to
     cover. If Radiohead were committed to delivering a
     tangible product (rather than a virtual one) they’d have
     been in serious trouble.

I’ve made this sort of mistake on many occasions. A marketing idea has worked brilliantly, and so I’ve blindly used it with another product or market, without giving enough thought to why it actually worked in the original situation. And it’s bombed. 

When I’ve looked at the situation retrospectively, it’s usually been obvious that the idea worked in the first situation because of factors that weren’t present in the second. This could easily have been foreseen by anyone humble enough to realise that they don’t know everything, and patient enough to sit down and think everything through carefully first. But it’s me we’re talking about here… 

Neither patient nor humble – but very good at making mistakes. It’s not a great skill. 

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE 

 FINALLY REVEALING  IAN’S
“INCOME FOR LIFE”
SECRET!

  Hello.
    

      Are you worried you’re going ot have to “work until you drop“?

      Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s 
  YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?

     Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

      Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you
  want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

     And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep your
  regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this
  blueprint in your spare time.

     Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

          www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes

John Harrison 

I spent an hour yesterday afternoon with an audiologist who sells hearing aids… 

And before you ask ~ no the hearing aid wasn’t for me. As my wife will confirm, I hear exactly what I want to hear. 

Anyway, I asked him about the difference between the mid-priced units he sold, and the top of the range, which were about 40% more expensive. He said that the differences weren’t huge ~ a few bells and whistles (actually that’s a terrible analogy…the last thing you want on a hearing aid is a whistle!) which most people wouldn’t need or use… 

So a lot more money for not much more benefit. 

And yet these units sold very well. 

Most products are affected by the phenomenon of diminishing returns as the price goes up beyond a certain point. Cars are an excellent example of this. The manufacturers create a standard car, and then offer more expensive variations on the theme, which offer some additional benefits, but the increase in price is far in excess of the increase in benefits. 

I own such a car. It’s a Porsche 996 GT2, and when it was new, it cost about 70% more than the standard 996. It goes faster, and looks better, but to the untrained eye, it’s not that different from the standard product. In fact, in some respects it’s worse, because it has no back seats and many creature comforts have been removed, to save weight. Oh and they appear to have done away with the suspension. And yet, the original buyers happily paid over £40,000 extra for the car. 

Now, before you think I’ve taken leave of my senses, I bought the car second-hand when it had depreciated to a point much closer to the current price of the standard car, and it’s actually now depreciating far less because of its exclusivity. But that wasn’t what influenced the original buyer. Like all buyers of premium-priced, top of the range products they purchased for one of a number of reasons:

1.  They have plenty of money and always have to have ‘the best’.

2.  They were prepared to ‘overpay’ for the unique benefit of the product.

3.  They crave exclusivity ~ to own something that very few people have ~ and are prepared to pay for the privilege.

When you think about most of the things you spend money on, there’s usually the opportunity to buy a premium-priced product ~ one which is better than the original, but probably not better value for money.

Consumer durables, furniture, clothes, food, holidays…just about everything. 

And here’s what’s interesting for you and me… 

No matter what product or service you sell, there is probably a hardcore of your customers who would pay considerably more for a ‘better’ version of the same product or service…and they’ll be prepared to pay far more than the enhancements cost to create. 

If you’re not currently doing anything to serve that latent demand, you’re missing a big profit opportunity. What’s more, you’re leaving yourself wide open to competitors jumping in and taking the cream off the top of your market. 

 John Harrison

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Best Wishes

John Harrison