Author Archives: Jodi Kaplan

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Limited Editions: Good or Evil?

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Black Friday line

Image by tshein via Flickr

Yesterday’s post touched on the idea of using a limited offer or quantity to spur sales.

In the comments, John wanted to know if “people really believe it. How can they trust that there really is a scarcity and not just a another marketing ploy?”

So, is marketing with limited editions really a good idea? Or is it an underhanded marketing trick?

Limited can be artificial

Well, it can be a ploy, like Black Friday deals, or the limited edition car. It can make something seem more exclusive or important than it really is. (Long ago, I was working at a cosmetics company and someone wrote in asking if his “limited edition” cologne set was valuable).

Limited can be real

Or, limited can be very real. An original copy of John Audubon’s book of bird illustrations just sold for $11.5 million dollars. It’s truly limited. There aren’t any more.  I happen to own a reproduction of the book, but that’s not the same. The original Apple computer cost $666.66 (hmmmm).  One of the rare surviving examples just sold for $210,000. You can get a brand new Mac mini starting at around $700 (and it’s faster), but they make lots of them — they’re not unique.

It can also be fun

For example, each day “woot” puts up a different daily deal. One day, one product, and then it’s gone. (today’s, by the way is a two-pack of smoke alarms). Will there be more smoke alarms in a real store? Yes. Is it a good price (decent, I had to pay $25 for mine and this is two for $40). They write funny copy, and it pulls you in.

“So just to make it easy, if you DON’T want to buy these smoke alarms, just check the box marked “I don’t value the safety of my home and worldly possessions or the lives of my loved ones.” Go ahead. Blame it on the holidays. IF YOU DARE.”

Same with Groupon. More funny copy, and participating is part of the fun (as well as part of the deal) (If you don’t know, Groupon offers discounts – but only if enough people sign up for it – so there’s an incentive to pass it on and tell your friends).

Share your thoughts

So, is making something limited a good idea? Or a bad one?

How to Create Demand with Limited Editions

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Creating demand through scarcity, or a limited edition is a popular tactic.  There are limited run cereals, candy bars, even limited time offer restaurants (they set up for a few months, then shut down).

In fact, there’s a restauranteur in New York who seems to specialize in this.
Volkswagen GTI MIAS 2007

He opens a restaurant, for several months or a year, then shuts it down and starts over.

It’s completely different behavior from most restauranteurs, who strive (often without success) to keep a restaurant in business for as long as possible.

Why create a limited edition?

Being available for a limited time, or only open certain days of the week adds to the cachet.  Only a few people will be able to get in to that restaurant, and only a few people will be able to enjoy the food.  There are even restaurants in New York that have no names.  You have to know they are there, which adds to their desirability and appeal (humans are silly).

Scarcity creates urgency

Urgency leads more people to sign up, buy, or act.  Not sure this works?  If you’re in the United States, think what happens on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving).  Stores, anxious to get shoppers in for the holidays, offer all sorts of crazy deals, often in limited quantities — like 50 inch plasma TVs for $300.  But, there’s a catch.  There are only 10 TVs at that price and you have to be in the store at 3 AM to get one.

Limits make it special, and increase demand

The photo in this post is a special edition Volkswagen GTI. It came in bright orange, cost $28,000 (back in 2007) and there were only 1200 of them. If you had one, people would notice it (heck, they’d need sunglasses to watch you go by). Anyone seeing that car in that color would notice it, and notice the owner too.  Even if they didn’t know it was a limited edition, they’d realize there weren’t lots of cars in that color.

For anyone who enjoys exclusivity, the offer is irresistible.

Share your thoughts

Do you think setting limits on offers is important?  Have you used this technique? What happened?

P.S. By the way, speaking of special offers, my invisible friend Bon is giving away a free Tassimo Brew Bot on her blog.  Leave a comment on her blog, facebook wall, or tweet it.  More details here.

Marketing and the Salad Dressing Rule

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Thousand Island Dressing on a plate of salad. ...

Image via Wikipedia

I just read about this today on the Well-Fed Writer blog (seems appropriate, doesn’t it).

The salad dressing rule means that when you’re marketing salad dressing, you first look for people who already enjoy and appreciate a fresh, crisp salad.

You ignore anyone who hates veggies, frowns at salad and would much rather eat a Big Mac and fries.

Market to the people who want you

Spending a lot of time and effort selling snowshoes to Arabian desert dwellers is a waste of effort.

Selling design services or writing to people who don’t see the value in those things is also a waste of time and effort.

Instead, focus on those who do appreciate (and understand) the value that strong writing skills brings to a project — sometimes literally.  If you write strong ad copy for example, your architect client may earn more money from her ad than if she wrote it herself. Make sure to point that out.  If she doesn’t agree that professional copywriting is important, she’s not the right client for you.  Move on to someone else.

Why your dressing is the best (for them)

Once you find people who already like salad, then you have to make it clear why they should buy your dressing, rather than someone else’s dressing.

What do your clients want from salad dressing anyway?  What’s important to them (not you, them)?

Do they want the freshest possible dressing?  Make yours daily (and tell them that).  Or, are they concerned about pesticides or artificial ingredients?  Point out that yours is organic.

Why do people who already buy your dressing like it?  If you’re not sure, sit down and think about it.  If you’re still not sure, talk to some clients and ask them.

Of course, unless you actually sell salad dressing, your real clients are more likely to be concerned about earning more money, having less stress, or doing something hard more easily.  Find out what most worries them, what keeps them up at night.  Then structure your product pitch to solve those problems.

Once you’ve done that, go have a nice salad. 😉

Why Your Marketing Needs More Chocolate

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Hersheys Chocolate

Image via Wikipedia

Chocolate! The best food ever (closely followed by cheesecake, roast duck, and fettucine alfredo).   Chocolate was once very, very expensive.  Only the upper-classes could afford it.

Then Milton Hershey came along and figured out a way to make it cheaply.  His chocolate tasted different than the old world brands, but it was cheap.  People bought it and people ate it. It was “the chocolate” around here.

Chocolate goes upscale

Now, of course, we have Green & Blacks, Dagoba, imported Dutch chocolates, and Amazon to bring us single plantation chocolate, higher cocoa content chocolate, imported chocolate and on and on.  New kids on the block can distinguish themselves by being organic, completely over the top (Max Brenner, or, my favorite, Michel Cluizel – which flies chocolates in regularly from Paris).

Why chocolate on a marketing blog?

Well, one I have a craving for it.  But more importantly, it shows how companies in a crowded field, or an industry that was ordinary, can stand out and differentiate themselves. Change the packaging, change the contents, make it harder to find, easier to find….

Copy the chocolatiers and make your business stand out

How do you stand out from other designers or writers?  Are you faster?  Slower? Do you make your illustrations by hand with pen and ink? Or work wonders with Photoshop and Illustrator?

Not everyone wants to (or can) pay $5 for a chocolate bar.  Likewise, not everyone will appreciate the value of a hand-drawn one-of-a-kind blog header.  Some will (those are your tribe).

How do you stand out?

Share your strategy in the comments.  Or, ask for feedback.

P.S.

When I was a kid, my dad would buy imported Dutch chocolate shaped like little wooden shoes.  Haven’t seen them in years.  Does anyone know where to find them in the US?