{"id":5669,"date":"2011-07-08T08:26:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T13:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/?p=5669"},"modified":"2018-11-01T14:51:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T20:51:21","slug":"sell-experiences-instead-of-stuff-to-grow-your-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/08\/sell-experiences-instead-of-stuff-to-grow-your-business","title":{"rendered":"Sell Experiences Instead of Stuff to Grow Your Business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Pam Danziger\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Pam-Danziger-250x269.jpg\" alt=\"Pam Danziger\" width=\"250\" height=\"269\" \/>Unity Marketing founder Pam Danziger is our featured guest blogger for this post. She is an internationally recognized expert on consumer behavior and specializes in the luxury market.\u00a0Pam is an author, consultant, researcher,\u00a0 keynote speaker and has\u00a0appeared on numerous television news shows.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I just got back from the National Stationery Show where I followed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sethgodin.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Seth Godin<\/a> (<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/08\/retail-marketing-and-the-purple-cow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Purple Cow<\/a><\/em> author and founder of Squidoo.com) talking to an audience of stationery manufacturers, marketers and retailers\u00a0on how to sell more stationery in today&#8217;s digital world.<\/p>\n<p>Our messages were basically the same \u2013 the way to succeed in business today is not to keep doing business the same old way, but to sell\u00a0what is\u00a0important and meaningful to the customer. We must stop trying to sell more stuff and focus on delivering unique, special experiences to\u00a0our customers.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Connect on an Emotional Level<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Stationery\u00a0customers desire products the industry already makes that help deliver those experiences:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Enhance and build connections between people<\/li>\n<li>Share feelings, sentiments, or emotions<\/li>\n<li>Create a personal bond<\/li>\n<li>Express creativity<\/li>\n<li>Make and save memories<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the show I met a bright enterprising young entrepreneur. Her challenge: She had picked out a particularly tough segment of the market \u2013 the high-end luxury category offering albums and notebooks priced in the $200 and above range. She was justifiably proud of her products, but I kept thinking that if she really wanted to get her products noticed by retailers with the right clientele, the last thing she wanted to do was virtually to \u201chide\u201d her products among a thousand other stationery companies selling the same kind of stuff, only a lot cheaper.<\/p>\n<p>If she really wanted to sell her products, she needed to go where:<\/p>\n<p>1. Her products would stand out and<br \/>\n2. Where people who really need them are and will value them.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the National Stationery Show might bring her some incremental business, but she needs a more expansive vision of who her target market could be. She needs to find retailers that will attract customers who will value the product experiences she sells beyond a narrow band of high-end stationery, gift and card shops.<\/p>\n<p>This market would include luxury-leaning bridal shops, jewelry stores, airport specialty stores, art galleries and funeral homes, among others, none of which define themselves as being in the stationery business. And specialty retailers in all different categories themselves could become a nice target audience too, if they bought one of her beautiful notebooks to put by their checkout counter to capture customers\u2019 names, cell phones and email addresses. Further, she needs a website to help brand\u00a0the romance she has to sell to people who are in search of her kind of special, luxury paper experience.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Take Action<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Focusing on the customer experience rather than the product is the secret to selling more stationery \u2013 or anything else. Retailing today is not about selling products any more; it\u2019s about supplying the customers with the tools they need to create the experiences they crave.<\/p>\n<p>Product-centric, vertically-organized industries made up of manufacturers and retailers that define themselves by the products they sell are founded upon the mistaken notion that people have a need for\u00a0more of the stuff they are trying to sell. The sad truth is most people don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Customers crave experiences, and the stuff you sell is only the mechanism that can deliver those experiences. So define your business around those <em>customer experiences <\/em>(i.e. verb), rather than by the <em>product<\/em> (i.e. noun).<\/p>\n<p>If you are in the gift business,\u00a0remind your customers of\u00a0the\u00a0excitement the recipient will have opening their gift including seeing the beautiful packaging. For food retailers, focus on the sensory aspects of your products in your store through sights and smells\u00a0and online through delicious images.\u00a0A good example of this is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.neurosciencemarketing.com\/blog\/articles\/sensory-branding-and-starbucks.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sensory Branding and Starbucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sell the means to the end, rather than making the product the end in itself.<\/p>\n<p>Pam Danziger<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/unitymarketingonline.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Unity Marketing<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Note: Pam needs\u00a0help from Nashville Wraps&#8217; customers\u00a0for her latest research. If you\u2019d like to share your ideas on social media and the internet, including its importance to your business, please connect to a short survey\u00a0Pam has prepared: \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.surveymonkey.com\/r\/8TYJ533\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Take Pam&#8217;s Survey <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unity Marketing founder Pam Danziger is our featured guest blogger for this post. She is an internationally recognized expert on consumer behavior and specializes in the luxury market.\u00a0Pam is an author, consultant, researcher,\u00a0 keynote speaker and has\u00a0appeared on numerous television news shows. I just got back from the National Stationery Show where I followed Seth&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/08\/sell-experiences-instead-of-stuff-to-grow-your-business\">Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":5678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1,162],"tags":[317,297,31,271],"class_list":{"0":"post-5669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gift-gourmet-business","8":"category-packaging","9":"category-business-101","10":"tag-pam-danziger","11":"tag-retail-marketing","12":"tag-small-business-marketing","13":"tag-small-business-tips","14":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25998,"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669\/revisions\/25998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nashvillewraps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}