Smart Marketing

Long live bacon

In what seems a lifetime ago, I used to catch an early morning train to travel into London. Most of the people on the train were regular commuters, all with their own routine. Some read newspapers, some slept, some listened to podcasts, and a very few actually worked.

About half way through the journey, a food trolly was pushed along each carriage. In addition to tea and coffee, it was loaded with a variety of sandwiches, crisps (chips), chocolate and snack bars, a little fruit. From observation, few people made a purchase. Too early in the morning.

Also attached to the train was a dining cart, where a traveller could buy something hot, like a sausage or bacon sandwich.

Speaking as a meat eater, the smell of a bacon sandwich always triggers my greed genes. The waft of hot bacon goes up my nostrils and straight to my brain. A chain reaction is instantly triggered, that drives a compulsion to buy and eat. It’s a well known medical condition known as ‘Impulsive Cantresistitis’. Well, that’s my excuse anyway!

Observation tells me that many other early morning commuters suffer from the same condition, because every now and then, the person pushing the trolly put a single hot bacon sandwich on the bottom shelf of the trolly. When they pushed it along, each carriage they passed through was filled with the smell of bacon. It worked it’s magic, and soon after passing through, my fellow Cantresistitis sufferers left their seat and headed to the dining carriage to make their purchase. Sales went up.

I recently read a couple of short accounts on equally clever marketing.

In the first story, a cab driver had a side hustle of selling perfume. He put a few bottles in his cab, and sprayed a little inside the cab as each passenger got in. If the passenger commented on the nice smell, he would offer to sell them a bottle. The guy was selling 25 bottles a day!

In the second story, a tea shop was struggling with sales. Too much competition meant that customers were spread thin. So the owner had the idea to introduce a new product to the menu - ‘Golden Tea’. This involved a slight change to the ingredients, making the tea with milk flavoured with tea masala. The olden Tea was so successful, the shop is still selling it 40 years later, with regular customers spreading the word about the wonderful taste!

Marketing needs thought. Think about the ways you can grab attention. Look for opportunities. Find ways to deliver your message that your competitors don’t use.

Selling fitness products or services? Offer to sponsor sections in your local bookshop. Get some branded bookmarks with your contact/email/website details on them, and slot one in every book in the section. People reading these books are interested in fitness, and quite possibly your product.

Photographer? Head off to your local photo print store and hand people leaving the store your flyer.

Artist specialising in pet portraits? Head off to your local animal rescue shelter and sponsor a wall, offering 20% of your sales to the shelter.

Smart marketing is within reach of us all. We just need to think!

This post originally published on my blog https://andywood.com/smart-marketing/