I just can’t stop thinking about marketing. Even on vacation.
A large part of my vacation time is spent in restaurants, so I often want to give unsolicited marketing advice to restaurant owners. This happened recently in Tirana, Albania. But since I don’t speak Albanian, I will share in a blog post instead. (And likely it will be more appreciated this way anyway.)
1) Make Your Offer Sound Appetizing
We went to a nice restaurant on a mountain, with a fantastic view, and traditional Albanian food. The dish I chose was described in English as “Tomato sauce, curdled cheese and lamb liver”. Given that choice I think many people would have just ordered the pizza, but I decided to be daring. Since the meal was only $4, I didn’t have much to lose. When my meal arrived, I was happy to see that it was not liver and nothing was curdled. In fact, a more enticing, and accurate, description would have been, “Tender lamb medallions baked with tomato sauce, local cheese and fresh herbs, served in a traditional clay pot.” It was delicious.
When you write a description for a Dynamics ERP/CRM training class, does it sound “appetizing”?
AP Training 101: Overview of common functions within the AP module of Dynamics GP.
Versus
How to Save Time Using the AP for Dynamics GP: Learn the best ways to use the AP module to get more out of your Dynamics GP system.
Which sounds more appealing to you?
Or how about a white paper, which would you rather download?
“An ERP Product Comparison Guide”
versus
“The Smart CFO’s Guide to Comparing Top ERP Systems”
Next time you make an offer, think about how to make it sound “appetizing” to your audience so they will not hesitate to order it.
2) Make it Easy for People to Spend More Money
Several restaurants we went to in Albania had extensive wine collections. But they did not have a wine list. They just had all the bottles on display. You could go over and look at them and choose the bottle you wanted. However, there were no descriptions and no prices.
I am not enough of a connoisseur of wine to know which ones I would like. I didn’t want to ask the waiter the price of every bottle and I also didn’t want to just choose one with a pretty label and later find out it cost $100.
I wanted to order wine. I had money to spend. But faced with this dilemma I took the easy way out and just ordered the house wine.
Instead, if the restaurant had given me a wine menu with a description of each wine and the price I would have easily ordered a nice bottle. Better still, the waiter could have recommended a bottle to me or the restaurant could have had a featured “wine of the month”.
I believe the same is true when it comes to selling software. Especially if you are selling add-on ISV products with the main system.
- Give a good description of each option.
- Show the prices up front so your customers know if they can afford it– people don’t like to ask the price.
- After you show the options, give your personal recommendation.
- Highlight a featured product, perhaps at a reduced price for a limited period.
Make it easy for people to spend extra money on something they want, instead of feeling that it is just too much trouble and they can do without it.
3) Make Your Company Stand Out
Did you know that there are 22,000 coffee shops in Tirana, Albania? The city only has about 1 million people but ALL of them drink coffee, all the time. It seems that in Albania espresso is not a luxury, it is a requirement for life.
Of course, I was only able to try a few coffee shops during our visit, but I researched many more. And it surprised me that none of them had “fancy coffee” with latte art. I realize that the local customers don’t care about this, but tourists like it. And tourists have money.
If just a few of the thousands of coffee shops started offering fancy coffee, they would stand out from the rest.
As Microsoft Dynamics partners, it is easy for us all to look alike. What can you do to differentiate your company and stand out from the others? Can you create a service or an offering that targets a niche audience? Even if it is the same product, perhaps it could be packaged and marketed in a new way. Maybe not everyone would need to buy your “Dynamics GP add-on for Celebrity Trainers”. But the ones who want it are looking for it and they have money.
Next time you are in a restaurant, take a few minutes to think about their marketing and what you can learn from it to improve your own business. I just can’t guarantee that your dinner partner will listen as patiently to your epiphanies as my husband always does.
By Anya Ciecierski, Collaboration Works Marketing
Follow me on Twitter: @AnyaCWMKtg