Too Good to be True?

I just read through a jewellery-marketing free report from a couple in Australia.  It has some very good fundamental marketing practices in the free report alone.  One thing they mentioned was particularly worth blogging about.  They suggest that you go through the different media you use and test each with an offer that’s “too good to be true.”

In a world where people’s attention is divided 6 million ways every day, it’s hard to see the effects of any of your advertising.  You might be surprised by what you learn from a too-good-to-be-true offer.  What if you offered something for free, and nobody even showed-up to claim it?

Let’s say you planned on spending $5,000 with a radio station, you might try spending the first $1,000 this way: create an ad offering for a $129 pair of earrings for $10 this weekend only for the first 10 people who come in with the secret code-word, “gold-rush.”  Your costs should be $500 for the ad placements before and after; and $500 to subsidize your product cost.  If you don’t get 10 people responding to the ad, you might have just saved yourself the other $4,000 you had planned to spend with them. 

If they’re lined-up 20 deep Saturday Morning to take advantage of your generous offer, you’ve done two things.  First, you’ve discovered that this particular media reaches people and provokes action.  Secondly you’ve just conditioned your market to pay attention to your ads in case there’s another too-good-to-be-true deal. 

After a promotion with successful results, you can release your follow-up advertisement thanking those who came-in and encouraging listeners who missed-out to keep tuned-in for the next surprise deal.  Your next surprise deal doesn’t have to be as good as the first, but don’t expect a stampede if your “promotion consists of “10% of select items.”

Now, you can repeat the experiment with $500 worth of ads in the newspaper, other radio station, bus-benches, Coffee News or whatever and see if the results match the first media.  That’s how you establish the value of your various media.  Oh, and by the way, those cheapskates who bought your $129 earring for $10?  What if two of them become new customers for life who each spend $10,000 with you over the next 10 years?