Firstly, A happy new year to you all. I hope that you had a great xmas and new year and that you’ve managed to get a decent break.
Like a lot of parents at Xmas, we’ve been a victim of some very successful marketing by certain companies and gone overboard with our sons christmas presents. But there was one present in particular that impressed me with their marketing, not just to get the sale, but to maximise how much I’ve spent with them not only to start with, but probably for the next 1-2 years.
Have you heard of Skylanders? It’s the latest gaming craze available over all the gaming platforms such as Xbox360 and the Playstation3. If you haven’t heard of it, what’s different is that with the game software, you get a “Portal of Power” that plugs in to your machine. Then you have a selection of toy characters that are placed on the portal and as you do so they come to life in the computer game.
The clever thing about this is that each character has its own unique powers and abilities, some perform better in different levels of the game and some areas of the game are not available unless you have a certain type of character. There’s over 30 characters to chose from (At the moment – I’m sure there’ll be more soon) and the initial starter pack comes with just 3 – But also with a collectors poster letting you know what others are out there ready to be unleashed onto our TV.
There’s an online version of Skylanders as well, where they’ve captured our details in order that my son can see his monsters Lair – Now I know that each time a new beast has been launched, I’ll be notified about it. And at £8 per Skylander, I know, that over the next year or two, I’m going to be in for at least another £100, probably double that when they bring out new accessories and software upgrades.
The makers of Skylanders, have clearly understood you shouldn’t be finding customers to make a sale, you should be making sales to find a customer. Once you have a customer, you need to know how to get them buying from you again and again and then make it easy and desirable for them to do so.
What could you do in your business to get your customers increasing the number of times they buy from you?
