The Marketing 24-7 Podcast

If you're used to spending big on exclusive purchases, then the Bugatti London Cafe is likely to be right up your street. 

Here, you can buy a shot of espresso for a whopping $60 US. 

But what exactly is it that makes this purchase so special?

For starters, it's all about the rarity factor. 

Rare items always command a high price, simply because they're so hard to come by. And when it comes to prestige purchases, it's all about the bragging rights. After all, not everyone can say they've been to the Bugatti London exhibition centre and bought a shot of espresso for $60!

As featured in the Robb Report, a $60 espresso grants you access to what was previously an invitation-only location. The Ettore shot (named after the company's founder and patron Ettore Bugatti), is served in a cup made from the carbon fibre that usually adorns Bugatti's cars.

Now that you have your espresso, you are permitted to savour it with full access to the showroom and it's lounge. One of Bugatti's latest hyper cars serves as a cafe' backdrop, and the showroom is fitted with the Bugatti's Home Collection furniture. The Bugatti chairs are specially designed with the same leather and blue-tinted carbon fibre found in and on their spectacular vehicles. 

But it's not just about the money. 

There's also a psychological element at play. 

When we make exclusive purchases, we're buying into a lifestyle, a certain way of life that is only accessible to a select few. In doing so, we feel more special and unique. And that feeling is priceless.

Of course, the person buying a $60 cup of espresso maybe isn’t the same person buying a $3 million Bugatti. But you are treated as such, and if you are interested in further repping the brand (or bragging about the experience), the Mayfair London showroom is one of the only locations that features the company’s full range of merch, including hats, clothes and watches. 

One can definitely lift a carbon-fibre cup to that.

So, if you're into crafting a unique and special experience, a Bugatti espresso is definitely an investment worth checking out.

Sun Tzu is credited with the phrase “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.” 

I have recently had a business deal go sour on me and unfortunately I did not heed this important lesson.

Listen to this podcast and you will hear all of the ins and outs of the deal – but the long and the short is I really should have not reacted quite so quickly to an email calling our agreed deal off.

Yes, it was poor, yes, it was a disgraceful act…

But…

With a bit of diplomacy on my behalf – I probably would have gotten my funds which were sitting in Escrow – back easier and sooner.

Lesson learnt 😠

The link to the podcast My First Million is https://www.mfmpod.com/ 

Just as unlikely as Collingwood football club's charge to the top of the table - is the Magpies becoming everyone's second-favourite team.

Even Collingwood veteran Scott Pendlebury concedes the prospect of that truly becoming reality is far-fetched.

But the Magpies' enthralling and improbable charge up the ladder has at least made rivals respect them.

Under popular coach Craig McRae, Collingwood has introduced a style of football that is exciting.

But more significant has been the superb standard of sportsmanship they have exhibited.

"I feel like if you don’t go for Collingwood, you don’t hate us as much as you used to," Scott Pendlebury has said.

"People don’t mind us at the moment, so if we could be everyone’s second side, which is probably unlikely, I wouldn’t mind that."

There are some valuable lessons in this sporting makeover that can also apply to your business. Take a listen to my latest podcast to find out more.

For some reasons retailers think nowadays that if they look and feel the same the shopper will be happy.

Maybe this is true for convenience shopping like grocery shopping but for normal retail shopping I think it is a terrible mistake.

In particular with =in big shopping malls – sadly they are all the same. This episode is being recorded in Singapore “the home of shopping”, and with some time on my hands between appointments – here are my findings…

Oh, I mention a Tony Soprano business lesson,

Here is the full script from the show…

Soprano analogy

Juliana Skiff met Tony Soprano in S6 E8 because she was a realtor working for Century 21 and was trying to purchase a building owned by Tony (Caputo's Poultry) in Newark, New Jersey for juice chain Jamba Juice. She was persistent in pursuing the deal, contacting Tony at Satriale's and the Bada Bing and over the phone.

Tony got into his "be a real loss for the neighbourhood schtik.

Tony understands that small mom-and-pop shops like Caputo’s are what give the old neighborhood its character and authenticity.  He is thoughtful enough to recognise that corporate retail stores have a soul-squashing, culture-killing homogeneity about them. 

Juliana Skiff, a representative of Jumba Juice, shows up at Satriale's. She offers to purchase a building owned by Tony, which houses a small business run by one of the Italian locals, for expansion by the Jamba Juice franchise. Tony bristles against it, wanting to hold onto the Little Italy that he remembers.

Dialogue

1st meeting

Julianna Skiff, Century 21. You got a minute? Sure. Cannoli? No, thank you. You own the building at 217 Franklin, right around the corner, currently occupied by Caputo Live Poultry. I represent the Jamba Juice Company. They're interested in purchasing the property. Jamba Juice... wants to put a store in around here? 

Well, you must have noticed the area's on an upswing. You know the old glove factory across the park, over by the cathedral, beautiful renovation. I just bought a loft there myself. Person like yourself's a wonderful addition to the neighborhood. Jamba Juice is willing to pay $175 a square foot. Public records show the building at 1,800 square feet. So that makes a purchase price of $315,000. 

You ever buy eggs from Caputo? Frankly, I'm not wild about the smell in there. Let me tell ya, his eggs taste 10 times better than any of the ones you get in the supermarket. Chickens too. Businesses relocate all the time. No, this would be a real loss for the neighborhood. Don't you live out in North Caldwell? Yeah, my family made the trek up Guinea Gulch. Bloomfield Avenue. But my roots here go way back. My grandfather came from Avellino like most of the people around here, and I grew up right over there. My father was an early community leader. Mm-hmm. 

How about you? Where're you from? 

Upstate New York. Binghamton. How'd you wind up here? My parents have a catering business, something to leave to the kids, right? Only I didn't see myself making Salisbury steak for the next 30 years. So I left home at 17. Rebellious. Just a low tolerance for boredom. So... interested, not interested? I'm interested. 

But as far as the property's concerned, 175 a square foot's a little low. And... I don't wanna sell out from under the guy.

There was a time when coffee was coffee. Ice cream was ice cream. A phone was a phone. Even a pair of jeans was, just a pair of jeans.

There are still businesses stuck in this time warp, continuing to conduct business as if people still purchased products.

Today, that cup of coffee comes with more options than a Porsche. A double shot, soy milk, almond milk, extra hot, topped up, half strength, in a takeaway cup because it tastes better. Thus, the $5.50 price for the 50 cents cup of coffee.

But even that is only half the story.

Breaking the price - product link

The profit margin of the double shot of extra something far exceeds the profit margin of the cup of coffee itself. The Prada Shearling Tote selling for $4,450 does not cost 200 times more to make than the tote at kmart for $20. This is a path to profit and to greater acceptance by affluent consumers. But as I said, it is only half the story.

Ordinary products morphing into their own category

Like them or not, Starbucks altered the coffee drinking world.

It redefined itself from a coffee shop to the "third-place" - home, office, Starbucks in between. It positioned itself as a merchant of feelings, of status, and most of all, of experience. A new category. And many other businesses have followed. Dean & Deluca (groceries), Under Armour (undies), Varsity Burgers and my favourite Burning Man (a camping trip in the desert with a bit of music ), have jazzed up their offerings to be in a new stratosphere with luxury pricing to match.

Price is no longer tied to product.

Far more appealing to "people with money"

As soon as you disconnect price and product in your own mind about your own products and services, you'll be liberated to make a great deal more money and to have much greater success appealing to the affluent and the top-end-of-town.

I think Tarantino is a genius.

Before his movie “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” was released, Quentin Tarantino said something very intriguing I believe all business people should take to heart in an interview he did with Deadline.

The context:

The plot of the movie is about a Hollywood actor and his stuntman in the late 60’s.

And to make sure the movie is as authentic as possible, Quentin literally wrote 5 episode scripts of the fictional TV show the actor starred in, in the movie (the audience who sees this movie will never see), as well as wrote out the main character’s entire fictional back story and filmography, film by film, as well as every single director he worked with, and all the little stories, quirks, and anecdotes on the sets he worked on, how he got his roles, who the casting directors were, which movies worked, which bombed, etc etc etc.

Why did he do all this extra work?

And, why did he do it even though the audiences won’t see it?

Because, as he put it in the interview:

“[The audience] need to know that I take this mythology this history seriously, and that there are answers to these questions. I don’t have to vomit it out but if you ask, I could tell you. The writer needs to know that mythology backwards and forwards. You need to be able to throw it off with the expertise of an expert.”

Lots of meat in that paragraph.

It’s like a crash course in writing school in some ways — especially for marketers, copywriters, and anyone in business wanting to dominate and control a niche.

But, like any skill, you still have to work hard at learning and mastering it first.

Thus, it’s completely incompatible for those who waste all day nattering on about nonsense in free Flakebook groups. Or the person who buys everything but uses nothing. Or the marketer who lacks the character to commit to anything that ejects them from their comfort zone.

i.e., 95+% of most so-called marketers.

The takeaway is that enough is never enough. If you really want to stand out in your business, you have to dig deep, pay attention to all of the little details and refine things striving for perfect.

Best summed up in a tale about another great Steve Jobs

He pored over every tiny detail of every product, every ad, every store, every thing related to Apple.

His attention to detail and craft came from his father who told him it was important to craft the backs of fences and cabinets even though they would never be seen.

Are you up for it?

Some of the meanest people I know are the wealthiest I know.

Strange isn't it, that while many wealthy consumers can easily afford high-fee cosmetic dentistry, luxury cars, first-class travel, designer fashions they find the price tags too big to swallow.

A $70,000.00 sticker on a car, a $35,000.00 fee quoted by the dentist, a $12,000.00 airline ticket are all so in-your-face. On the surface, the difference between the $70,000.00 car vs. the $35,000.00 car isn't so great; a car may feel like a car. On the plane, all the seats arrive at the same time. 

I am sure you have heard this logic before.

Oddly however, these same people are easily wooed by little luxuries. 

For what seems like a small uptick (which is a very big increase in profit margin) they can feel special without guilt. 

The fact that you can pick up two litres of ice cream at the supermarket for about the same price as a tiny cup of ice cream at a Gelateria is more disconnected. The experience is dramatically different. At the creamery, you pick out your flavour, your ground up cheesecake crust and chocolate chips, and watch your dessert being made for you on a granite slab. The price is still easily found in pocket or purse. It requires no thought, is done on impulse, feels good, and is easily rationalised. If I need had a hard day, I deserve it. 

These little indulgences do add up. 

Allow me to introduce you to a concept called luxflation.

Termed by author Pamela Danziger it is the inching up of price. A form of self-induced inflation, experienced by consumers willing to pay what seems a little more for much better experiences - when, in fact, that little more may be a 500% to 5,000% premium. 

It's ironic that the government, economists, and the media sweat bullets and display great angst over inflation creeping up by a half of a percent while consumers cheerfully accept 500% inflation in dozens of purchases every day. 

This is important to grasp, as it affects every business. 

If you cultivate these opportunities, these little indulgences can really add up for you in your business. 

Luxflation is not new. 

The story is now a legend of how "burger chains" use the point-of-sale strategy, where the cashier responds, "Do you want fries with that?" ATS (average transaction size) is one of the most important numbers to know, manage, and work at improving in many businesses, whether you sell burgers to frequent customers or motor vehicles to very infrequent repeat customers. 

Let's say we own an ice-cream stand where the cashier responds to each order by presenting the offer of a double flavour shot and an extra scoop of fresh fruit. If half say yes to the extra $4, and they serve 200 ice-creams a day, that's $400 added to revenue. But we may have increased the profit margin, invisibly, by much more. 

If we can alter the whole experience to support a higher price, still add the extra fruit, and add a big chocolate chip cookie, well, we might take our $9 average transaction to $15. On a grander scale, we may turn our ice-cream stand into a much-talked about, much preferred destination rather than just one of a dozen same-as places in town. 

Being in the little indulgence business in a big way, can lead to much bigger profits, but even to something more valuable: 

Sustainable unique positioning in your customers' minds and lives.

In my business I like to use the content I create in articles, blog posts, white papers, podcasts and interviews to develop a position in marketing called omnipresence.

Omnipresence means your prospects can't look in any direction bumping into you. Somebody is talking about you, somebody is showing them you, you are in the media they see you on socials. 

The most effective thing you can do for yourself is to put yourself in the centre of the right group of people who you want talking to each other about you. This will lead to a mass of potential clients to “swim upstream” into your network and start paying you money.

To evidence the power of this phenomenon, I outline my client acquisition data from the last full year of the consulting arm of my business.

For the year I attained 76 new clients. 10 of them came to me directly from my marketing, two found me through my wife and eight others had worked with me over the years but are now in their own business or are fronting a new business and sought out my services. The “eye popper” a whopping 63% of last year’s new clients amounting to 45 businesses “swam upstream” via my network (of which I am in the centre of).  

Eleven (11) came from purchasing a book. That too is a little deceptive, because most of them said they bought the book as the second thing after hearing about me somewhere in a newsletter they read, or someone mentioning me to them. They then went to Amazon and bought a book. 

There are two things about these numbers that I think are extremely instructive. 

One is that upstream is a significant strategy. 

Meaning you should find ways to put yourself in a similar position. Whether it is builders feeding clients upstream to a Mortgage Broker or a fabulous restaurant finding ways to get other types of businesses with the right customers, feeding clients upstream to them. 

Keep in mind, I specialise in advertising and marketing and yet 63% of my new clients came from someone else. What is more when I drill down into the 63%, there is no source that is really good by itself. One from here, one from there. two from here, three from there. It would have been nice just to have one or two sources that they all came from, but that is not the case. (In fact, it wouldn’t be nice because “one is the worst number” you can have in business – as I have already talked on about in multiple podcasts.

In my world, I like to provide my referral network with great content and resources to use for their purposes. I trade on the fact that everybody is lazy when it comes to content creation and, they welcome good content that they do not have to create themselves. This provides a positive benefit for them. In doing this what I have essentially created is around a hundred influencers who expose me to their customers on a regular basis. 

From this, the best customers swim upstream. 

The smartest one’s swim upstream. 

The biggest spenders swim upstream. 

The most common comment I get is, I have heard about you here, heard about you there, so I decided to go to the source, and find you for myself. 

The second thing to understand is that if you assume that the 45 new businesses are worth on average forty to eighty thousand dollars in annual value as customers, that is a pretty big number. Which all came to me from simply stitching together little numbers, which cumulatively became a solid number.

This strategy takes work, this strategy is not for the faint hearted and at times this strategy requires you to get out of your comfort zone, but a considerable number of my clients that have adopted the same “swimming upstream” strategy conclusively swear by the results. 

To find out more about my Fast Money for entrepreneur strategies please visit petergianoli.com/fast-money

I’ve noticed something about consultants.

Most of them have the same frustrations when it comes to social media. I work with a lot of consultants and hear the same issues over and over again.

Any of these sound familiar?

• “I’m putting a lot of time and effort into social media, but not getting any meaningful results.”

• “I feel stuck, my business is stuck and don’t know what to do to get unstuck.”

• “I don’t really have any plan for how to use social media, so I’m just randomly posting stuff.”

If any of these resonate with you (and I bet several do), then you’ve come to the right place.

There are 13 social media strategies I can share - here are just 3!

I know these work because I’ve seen them work over and over again for all different types of consultant clients.

1. Use fewer social media platforms.

You don’t need to use every social media platform. In fact, you shouldn’t.

Just because Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, and a thousand other platforms exist doesn’t mean you have to use them.

Any one of those platforms has more than enough people on it for you to achieve success beyond your wildest dreams, so break from the feeling that you need to be everywhere.

1. Follow fewer people.

Don’t follow everybody who follows you.

Don’t follow random people in the hope they’ll follow you back.

Don’t follow anybody you’re not genuinely interested in.

And don’t be afraid to unfollow people – often.

The fewer people you follow on any social platform, the better your feed will become as the algorithm will learn to better serve you.

1. You don't need more followers, simply the RIGHT followers.

The first question I ask a consultant client is always, “What are your social media goals?”

Their answer always includes some version of “I want to get more followers.”

That’s an understandable answer, but it reveals a crucial strategic flaw.

Because you don’t need more followers, you need the right followers to help you accomplish your goals.

If these 3 strategies made sense - read on!

If you’d like more hands-on help with these strategies, plus another ten more, visit my website petergianoli.com/social-strategy-for-consultants and download my latest resource. It's FREE!

When a person goes for a job interview or when they are introduced to someone for the first time, the impression that is known as "first impression" is critical in determining how things will go.

In fact, research says that the first 40 seconds is what can make or break a job interview.

And this: In a jury trial, the first impression of the defendant is 40% as important as all further impressions put together.

"First impression is a lasting impression" - Oscar Wilde.

We have all heard it said that if you give off a positive first impression, then people will see you in a better light and your life would be made easier for having done so.

And this: when a person falls in love, they may say that it is love at first sight.

So let's look into this thing called "first impression" and see if we can find out why it lasts. Just how does one make a good first impression? What is the magic in making a good (or bad) first impression? And what is all of this got to do with marketing and your business.

Well this, you either hook or lose a prospect with your marketing piece, not when they read it, but when they first look at it.

Now, of course this rule is not 100% accurate. Sometimes a person will read your piece, see it again sometime later and be hooked. Sometimes they hook themselves by reading through.

But most of the time that is not what happens. Most of the time when they get your email, or if they are sitting in front of someone pitching them with all their might, its this first impression that sets the tone for everything.

So, what does this mean when it comes to creating marketing? Since you only get one first impression, then ensure that your marketing piece has a powerful message in it and this will usually be the case when all emphasis is on the hook.

The good news for marketers is that most people tend to miss detail when they are looking at something for the first time. They tend to see "the forest" rather than “the trees".

This is why you will read a piece once, and if you like the “forest” you will decide whether you will read it again. Then as you reread it and get more out of it you are now seeing "trees" instead of "forest".

So, if this is true, then how can marketers use this? Again, your first impression must be powerful enough to keep the person hooked. So that when they consider it again, then there is a good chance that you will have another opportunity to hook them when they read it or hear it for a second time.

Just remember this: "First impressions last".

And don't forget this: If you fail to leave a powerful impression on someone at first meeting, the best ad copy in the world will not help you.

Have you ever watched professional poker players, constantly looking at their opponents eyes when they draw a card? What they are looking for is a specific micro-expression that can indicate whether the player has just drawn something good or if they have just drawn something bad.

This is because the eyes, like all other parts of the body, do not lie and will give away any secret or "tell" like behaviour before it happens. Poker players try to pick up on this nonverbal behaviour and try to make use of it themselves.

Well, I have a theory about all of this. What I believe is that most (or many) of our decisions about how we like or dislike something are not made in 40 seconds, or the first 4 or 40 minutes but rather in the first fraction of a second that we see something new.

And, I further believe that we unconsciously spend the rest of our so-called decision making time not really making a decision after all, but instead searching for justification for the decision we have already made.

And, that's why it is so difficult to get people to see your product, service or idea from a fresh perspective.

The mind remembers things that are associated with strong emotions - it will forever remember the "first time". Think about the intensity of emotion you experience when you first fall in love. And then think about how powerful that can be 10 years down the road.

I think that if you can get your prospect to get an instant lift out of your marketing, you'll be several steps ahead of the game.

Remember: The mind remembers things that are associated with strong emotions - it will forever remember the "first time". Get a lift or get lost!

This is why I say: "Every Marketing Piece Has to be fresh, has to be unique and has to have a Hook In It"

Until next time..