Tempurpedic Night-Time Renewal Kit

I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! My family and I sure did. Though I miss my friends in El Paso, now that we’re back in Austin, all of our family is within a 4 hour drive. We had 19 over for dinner and it was such a blessing to have our entire family together to celebrate with us this year.

This week, I’d like to talk about the no charge offer.

If you’ve seen the commercials that Tempurpedic (beds) has been putting out these past few months, you know that they are offering to give callers a complimentary night-time renewal kit.

I can only imagine the investment they are making into television production & advertising and the staff to handle the calls….not to mention the kit itself, the postage and the time and effort to follow up on all of the kits that were sent out.

Why would anyone make that kind of investment, giving stuff away to an entire nation? It’s not like they’re just marketing that free thing on television commercials, it’s on their website too.

I’ll tell you why they do it - to build their database with interested prospects.

Even though at their core, they sell beds, they don’t use that word as a stand alone product.

They use it as an activity - “Welcome to bed”…they use it as part of the names of what they offer - “Celebritybed”…however, what they market is a “Sleep System”.

Remember last week’s topic - “The Packaging Of Salt”? It’s how they package and market their beds. They want you to buy an experience.

Because they want you to look at what you are sleeping on in a new light, they have a lot of work to do getting you sold on buying their “nighttime experience” rather than “just a bed”.

Do you offer a product or service that asks people to change?

Personally, I do. I also choose to give something away for free because I want to give people the opportunity to try it (see www.freecustomgreetingcard.com )

When I started in direct sales as a work at home mom in 1999, I had no ad budget. It was all I could do to scrape together the couple of hundred bucks it took for me to purchase the starter kit. I had never networked. I didn’t even know my neighbors.

I did however, see the power of the internet. And I knew I could find a lot of other people on it and I could advertise my business to them.

As traffic increased on my website and hundreds of people requested catalogs or contacted me, it only made sense that I should keep all of that information and continue to communicate with them.

I started looking for ways to send a regular email newsletter out to those folks because at the time, my little Outlook Express program couldn’t handle it.

As software options because more prevalent, I moved thousands of contacts around until I found the perfect system. I wanted to be able to send real birthday cards, anniversary cards, holiday cards, and thank you cards in addition to the email newsletters.

If I had the advertising and staff budget that Tempurpedic had, it would have been a lot easier But I didn’t. It was just me and I worked hard to develop my own giveaways and incentives to grow my mailing list and communicate accordingly.

I soon had over 10,000 people on my list, was giving something away every month, sent out a regular newsletter, acquired over 3,300 customers and was personally selling between $3k-10k a month in products.

So, would it be worth it for YOU to build a mailing list by giving something away? I don’t mean a five cent sample either. You have to give something away that someone would want, but the key is, you must assume they are interested in what you have to sell and follow up accordingly.

I’m sure Tempurpedic doesn’t go to the trouble of giving away a Nighttime Renewal Kit to everyone that wants one just to throw money away. Think about why they do it and how they do it. Perhaps you could apply the same concept to your business.

Depending on what you sell, you don’t have to do it like they do, giving away something to everyone who calls or like I do today, giving away a free greeting card to everyone who wants to send one. You can run a contest instead and just give one really nice thing away each month.

It takes work and dedication to make a project like this work, but it can reap huge rewards. If you’d like a little help, you can always contact me. I’ve done it. I know what works and I know what doesn’t.

Save yourself some time and money - leverage my eight years of experience.  Schedule a consultation today.

——————–

If you’re new to my Monday Message and would like to read past issues, stop by the Newsletter section.

——————

Make it a great week!

Wishing you great success,

Ricci Neer

PS - have you sent your free greeting card? Visit www.freecustomgreetingcard.com

The Packaging Of Salt

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve mentioned that I’d soon be talking about the packaging of salt. I’ve had some interesting responses.

What came into your mind when you thought about “package” and “salt”? Perhaps a round container with a dark blue label on it, with the impression of a girl standing under an umbrella?

That’s how I thought about salt for years. Then I heard about the wonders of sea salt. I looked for it in my grocery store isle and started using what I found there.

As I became more conscientious about my food choices, I began to do more research, read more books and subscribe to more mailing lists that had to do with natural health. My diet became better and I spent more money on supplements and organic foods.

I was a prime candidate for whatever the natural health food peddlers wanted to package up and sell to me.

Which brings me back to salt.

About a year ago, one of the email newsletter lists that I was on (and still am on) touted the wonders of the “Purest Salt On Earth With Amazing Health Benefits”. Wow, with a headline like that, who wouldn’t want to know more? The sales letter was chock full of information and facts to back up their claim.

I had to have some of this pure salt and I bought 2 lbs of it on the spot. From someone I’ve never met, online, because I was subscribed to their mailing list. They sold me.

Have you ever been 1) a prime candidate and 2) bought something you didn’t even know existed until someone sold it to you? Sure you have. We all have.  (that’s what infomercials are for!)

The study is in how you can create this dynamic and turn it into a profitable system for YOUR products and services. More on that another time…

Now, I’m not selling it, but if you want to see the same letter I saw, the same words that prompted me to buy something I didn’t even know existed, you can see it here:

http://www.mercola.com/forms/salt.htm  - BUT before you get excited about this amazing wonder salt and buy it here….I have something else to tell you.

I OVERPAID!

Yes, it was worth it. I LOVE this salt. And it lasted forever. I used it in everything and I am only running out now, a year later. However, after I moved back to Austin, I went to a little place called “Central Market”. And guess what they have there? A salt bar! All kinds of colors and types of salt from around the world. I was enamored! It was in bulk and I could buy as much or as little as I wanted of every kind of salt imaginable.

So, after a little research, I found that I could get Himalayan Pink Salt for around $4 a pound. But originally, I paid over $10 a pound. It was all because of the packaging (and marketing) of the “purest salt on earth with amazing health benefits”.

What could you sell more of, even at a premium price, if you packaged and marketed it more effectively? Subtle but creative methods are all around you. Think outside the box and try something different.

Central Market didn’t package and sell me on the benefits of the salt, and if I had never heard about it from the email newsletter I received, I would have walked by that salt bar without even knowing what I was missing. (and by the way, if I hadn’t moved, I probably would have purchased more salt from the place I did before, just to get my hands on more of it!)

——————–

If you’re new to my Monday Message and would like to read past issues, stop by the Newsletter section of my Get The Word Out! Marketing website http://www.gtwomarketing.com/?cat=13

Also, if you want to know why “Sales & Marketing” is THE seminar topic MOST requested by entrepreneurs and small business owners nationwide…visit www.gtwomarketing.com

——————

Make it a great week!