How To Get Mom's Attention

Dear Friend,

Here's a pretty clever marketing trick:  Yesterday morning, 1-800-flowers set up shop right down in the middle of Times Square.  They had about a dozen young ladies, all dressed up in bathrobes and slippers, handing out pink and lilac carnations to the people passing by.  And in Times Square, that's a LOT of people.  Easily more than 10,000 people in one hour alone.

Since they paid particular attention to mothers and families, and since we were walking around that area quite a bit, we wound up getting almost a dozen of these carnations.

Jim McCann - the owner of 1-800-flowers  - is no stranger to marketing, and he knows giving out flowers ALONE, is nowhere near enough to sell.  Jim knows, unless you're giving your prospects a "call to action" - meaning, unless you're telling them what to do... and unless you're giving them a "reason to act now"... then you're still relying on "dumb luck" to close a sale.

And relying on "dumb luck" really isn't going to help you make your boat payments, now is it?

So, Jim did two things:  First of all, to offset the cost of the promotion, he teamed up with Fox TV.  See, the robes the women were wearing had the "Fox" logo embroidered on the back of them.  And since we saw literally several HUNDRED boxes of carnations being given out, I'm sure this wasn't an inexpensive promotion.

And two, inside each of these carnations, that were wrapped in plastic, was a coupon for 15% off if you call 1-800-flowers and place an order.

Now depending on what you do, chances are OUTSTANDING you can run a similar kind of promotion for your business, right?

Understand one thing you need to do that's ULTRA important, is what 1-800-flowers did, thinking carefully about their marketplace.  Notice how they gave these out right in front of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square where the demographics were solid enough to produce MANY likely buyers of the product.  They weren't giving these out on Fordham Road up in the Bronx.

WHO you're prospecting is ALWAYS the most important part of your promotion.  Even the best sales copy with the sweetest and most irresistible offer possible, won't sell, if you send it out to the wrong audience.  Cigar smokers WON'T buy cigarettes -- "almost" right in marketing is like "almost" pregnant.  You're either "on target" or "off" - there's no acceptable middle ground.

By-the-way, if you are a mom, have a fantastic and well-deserved Mother's Day.  And if you are a smart marketer, take a 100% FREE test-drive of Seductive Selling™, the most powerful eye-opening and insightful offline marketing publication around, and you can do this right here:  http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl

Now go sell something,

Craig Garber

P.S. Are you a "Maverick Marketer"?  Prove it:  http://www.kingofcopy.com/maverickmarketer

Any comments?

Send them to me by scooting over to the contact form on my "Here's How To Contact Craig" page, and maybe I'll publish them -- I appreciate your feedback!

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