Marketing Lessons from My Family

Families can teach us a lot about marketing. Today was a perfect example of that. While out to lunch today with my lovely mother and grandmother, my grandmother (Memaw) shared a story with us about a product that she recently bought. She explained that my father gave her a call at around 1 am in the morning to ask her if she was still up (well DUH she answered the phone…she is still awake). Anyway, he told her that she needed to tune to to WOSU TV and check out a special that they were running on music from the 50′s. The nostalgia of the era got both my father and my grandmother very excited.

Memaw explained how just listening to the music play took her back to the years when she was in high school, she and Tom (my grandpa rest in peace) would dance together and go to the burger joints and have a heck of a fun time. “All of my old favorites were on the special it was like living in the past.” During the special they were also selling the complete set of CD’s. This is where the marketing power of memories really comes into play here.

Not only did my grandmother purchase a set for herself, which is set to arrive here in the next few days. But she also called 5 of her friends (yes at 1 a.m. in the morning) and told each of them about the special, and encouraged them to buy a set for themselves (two others actually did make the purchase).

Now that the sale has been made and the story has been told I think it’s important to note the things that the company had working for them in order to get the sale, this is a marketing blog so I do promise a marketing message here.

Lessons to Be Learned

1. Timing is Everything – This commercial went on a 1 am, sure that is normally a time when most people would be asleep, but think about the people who are awake. They are going to be less likely to resist making an impulse buy because they are tired. Also, at 1 am you don’t have anything else going on in your life so you can pay total attention to the marketing message.
2. Emotional Appeal is Very Effective – Getting the emotional appeal of just one person caused 3 others to purchase a product. My father (who wasn’t even aware that they were selling CD’s) called my grandmother about the music from the 50′s special simply because he was moved emotionally. That same strong emotional appeal caused my grandmother to purchase the product and get 2 of her friends to purchase as well.
3. Word of Mouth Marketing is The best kind – I’ve said it many times before and tell my clients every time we discuss social media marketing that word of mouth marketing is the best kind. Human nature is to want to interact with things that the people we care about approve of. This was a textbook case of word of mouth marketing working perfectly.

The example I used in this case was a TV ad played late at night, but with the explosion of streaming video on the internet, and of social media you and your business have the opportunity to be just as effective in your online campaigns. Applying what we know from old marketing tactics and applying them to new mediums has proven effective for me many times over. We’re not looking to re-invent the wheel, we just want to change the tires. That is my cheesy comment of the day. Thanks for reading.