Yesterday morning, my friend Sam and I were sitting at a cafe terrace that hangs over the waters of Lake Lucerne. We were getting a coffee while waiting for a boat to take us down the lake, to the bottom of a big mountain, which we would attempt to scale.
Of course, this being Switzerland, we each got a little chocolate next to our coffees. Well, I got a chocolate, but for some unfair reason, Sam got two.
Our three little chocolates were all the same size. Later, at much higher altitude, we would find out they were also the same flavor. But each of the three chocolates had a slightly different design on the wrapper.
One was light blue and had a picture of a locomotive. That chocolate was advertising a “guest house and games paradise.”
The second chocolate was white with an elegant font. That was advertising a rentable space to hold events.
The third chocolate was also white but a bit more flashy in its font. That was advertising a “shopping restaurant.”
Since my mind has been entirely warped by thinking and writing about marketing every day, I noticed this and I thought about the underlying model. It’s this:
1. Take an expense for other businesses (for cafes, little chocolates next to each coffee)
2. Provide that thing for free both in terms of cost and effort and risk (the chocolate tasted good, and the design was classy)
3. Use the thing for traffic/distribution/advertising for your a product or service of your own choosing (“gasthof und spielparadies” on the wrapper)
You might say this is nothing special or unusual. But you can get creative.
For example, many people used to pay a few dollars a day to read the Wall Street Journal (1). Then some guys made a free email newsletter with the most important news of the past 24 hours (2). In between the news segments they also put in ads (3). The result was Morning Brew, which sold a controlling stake for $75 million a couple years ago.
Back in the Barcelona supermarket I go to, you can get free bubble gum (1 and 2) at the store, along with various other small items, if you download an app that tracks you and serves you ads for other products (3).
Then there’s the offer I made a couple months ago, to help businesses add in a “horror advertorial” into their cold traffic funnel for free (2) — a service I would normally charge a lot of money for (1) — if they would also insert an email into their welcome sequence to promote my new newsletter (3).
And finally, there’s an idea I’m planning for the future, to offer syndicated content (1) to businesses for free (2), as a means of advertising that same new newsletter I’m working on (3).
In other words, this simple little chocolate idea has broad applicability when you start to think about it.
But there’s a bigger point, too.
The bigger point is— well, I will talk about that tomorrow. No sense in jamming two good ideas into one email.
I’m approaching the Zurich airport as I write this. It’s time to leave this rainy but beautiful country. The train I’m on will be six minutes late in arriving, and the conductor just came alive on the PA to announce that shocking delay and to apologize in German, Italian, and English.
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