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What We Can Learn About Marketing From A Little Girl Selling Drawings Door To Door

Today, I was in the middle of a work call and saw a little girl walk up to my porch. The last time a kid walked up to the porch, It was a boy raising money for his basketball team. He was very sincere, and frankly, it takes a lot of willpower to walk up to people’s doorstep and ask them for donations. So I gave him whatever cash I had.

When this girl showed up, I grabbed my wallet and asked the client to hang on for a moment, assuming this girl might be raising money for a school function or something. Instead, she mentioned that she and her friends were selling pictures at a house down the street.

I probably would have bought one. Who doesn’t want to support a young entrepreneurial kid? But I didn’t.

I didn’t buy one for the sole reason that I would have had to walk down the street to get the picture. Which involved a lot more time along with walking up to a strangers house. (Her parents might think that’s kind of weird too.) It involves lots of steps into unfamiliar territory.

If I could have thought on my feet a bit more, I would have suggested to this girl:

  1. That she carry the pictures with her so that people could see them and purchase them right then and there.
  2. That she asked for people’s phone numbers so her mom could text photos of the artwork, then the kids could drop the pictures off later.

The reasons for this are pretty obvious: For one, bringing the pictures with you would make it easy for people to buy from you. That’s pretty obvious. Secondly, if she had everyone’s phone numbers, she would have the option to have her mom text them again a month later and find out if they wanted to buy another picture! She could even text all of her neighbors 20 years later when she opens an art gallery in New York! (Who know? Let’s stay optimistic.)

These same concepts I would have suggested to the girl can be applied across multiple businesses.

1. Make it as easy as possible for people to purchase from you. Especially if they have no prior knowledge of your brand or what you sell. If the process is confusing or requires a lot of effort, you may be shooting yourself in the foot.

2. Even if you don’t make a sale, make sure you have a way to follow up with people. I work with people all the time that are just starting a new business. Nine times out of 10 (or 99 times out of 100), someone is not ready to buy on their first impression. For this reason, we spend a lot of time building systems that introduce someone to a brand without actually asking them to buy so that we can follow up with them later when they’re ready.

All that to say, marketing concepts like this can be applied to anything. Make life easy for people who want to purchase from you.

These strategies have helped many of our clients go from what probably would have been a short run of a few sales to full time businesses, following up with potential customers with sale after sale!

Don’t send your customers down a tunnel of unknowns on your website. Make a clear path that holds their hand through the process! Think about it this way: Every business venture has a cost: It’s either time or money! If you spend money on an ad reaching a potential customer, or time cold-contacting them, having a clear path to a purchase or involvement that involves minimal effort can mean splitting your time in half or doubling the effects of your ad spend.

Honestly, we spend at least 50% (if not more) of our time spent on marketing contracts at Emberly not just setting up outreach for clients, but finding ways to make the communication clear and concise once we reach someone!

In summary: Make sure you follow up with customers & make it easy for them to buy stuff!

-Chandler

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