A Brilliant Marketing Idea

What's the goal of your marketing efforts?  The traditional marketing path relied on advertising to make a business more visible, but visibility and memorability are not one and the same and one does not necessarily beget the other.  Today's marketing for decorative plumbing and hardware showrooms, which must account for the fact that consumers control a businesses' brand, should focus on creating memorable customer experiences.

 

Bernadette Jiwy, in another brilliant blog post, related the story of a new bakery that decided to eschew traditional advertising, opting instead to promote its brand by offering a weekly bread basket to one lucky customer, who received a week's supply of different breads and goodies to share with their family.  But that's not all and the "not all" is a stroke of genius. Each customer who won the bread basket then got to nominate the next person to receive the free bread and to document the reasons why they chose their friend, colleague or neighbor in a notebook at the bakery.  The free weekly giveaway, Jiwy points out, did not simply promote the bakery's brand, it connected friends and neighbors and made them feel like they mattered.  

 

The lesson for decorative plumbing and hardware showrooms? Why not offer a weekly gift to a potential or former customer?  Why not partner with a faucet, cabinet knob, shower head or other manufacturer and provide a bath improvement basket?  Why not have your customers nominate a colleague, friend or neighbor to win the next basket and have them write the reasons they should win the basket on a notebook in the showroom, and on your web site?  Why not?