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Newsletter #837: The “Different Ways to Sell It” Issue

[Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That! newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]

Few things have a more immediate impact on sales than how you price it, package it, and display it. Check out how these smart marketers are changing this experience for their customers:

1. Sell it before it exists
2. Let fans sell their version of it
3. Sell just one thing
4. Check it out: Letters of Note

1. Sell it before it exists

With some smart marketing, you could start selling your product before it’s even finished. The big brands do this all the time with pre-orders, but even little guys can do it. Check out what the designers at Robot, Monster, & Ghost are doing with their “mystery poster sale.” Brave fans could pre-order the yet un-designed poster for $5, with the price doubling once the design was unveiled about a month later. And once they were ready for printing, the price doubled again to $20. The clever pricing scheme helped them get a bunch of talkers invested early, long before the product was in production.

The lesson: How could you award your biggest fans and talkers with the opportunity for an early investment?

Learn more: Robot, Monster, & Ghost

2. Let fans sell their version of it

The music industry continues to be one of the best places to explore unique ways to sell your stuff. Rock group Kaiser Chiefs have set up a buffet of sorts for their new music. Fans can listen to extracts from 20 new songs and assemble their favorite 10 into their own personally-constructed album. Pretty cool — but what’s more, these fans then get their own unique web page where they can promote their album to their friends. And for every album they sell, they get a $1 referral bonus.

The lesson: Your loyal fans could be a powerful army of salespeople. Your job is to make it easy (and fun) for them to do it.

Learn more: Billboard

3. Sell just one thing

When you narrow the choices, you almost always create more sales. And if you wanted to go all out, you might be better off just selling one thing. That’s what author Andrew Kessler is doing with his new pop-up store in New York. It’s a bookstore that just sells one book: his just-released “Martian Summer.” His store features special shelves for best sellers and sale items (which are one in the same), and he even offers free samples in the form of small cards printed with the book’s first paragraph.

The lesson: If you ran a store with just one item or dropped all but one of your service offerings, what would you focus on? What would happen?.

Learn more: The New York Times

4. Check it out: Letters of Note

Letters of Note is dedicated to collecting and publishing great correspondence that deserves a wider audience. This amazing collection includes letters from John Lennon, Dave Grohl, Conan O’Brien, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Learn more: Letters of Note

 

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