This post is about exclusivity marketing — the opposite of discrimination. Exclusivity is as good for business as discrimination is bad. What is exclusivity marketing and why should you care? Exclusivity is simply treating people in a way that makes them feel special and, well, you might want to care because it works big for businesses of all sizes.
Five Ways to Treat Your Crowd Exclusively
- Use exclusivity to shape in person communications. Don’t you just love to feel important? I do. Our customers do. We all do. Small business owners don’t need big, expensive loyalty rewards to weave exclusivity into effective marketing goals and tactics.To let folks know they’re special, exclusive even, start with this budget saving technique: tell them. Be you, be authentic. But in your own priceless style, tell them often.
- Review your email communications with an exclusivity hat on. You can send thank you emails for new orders or first time purchases. You might share special offers — and even ‘we want you to be among the first know’ early alerts of your most valuable opportunities. Are your customers doctors, Moms or craftsmen? It’s likely they’re proud of that mastery: use email copy to acknowledge your audience forwho they are.
- Use imagery to let your crowd know how exclusive they are. For one terrific medical scrubs dealer, our research identified ‘big and beautiful’ consumers as a wholly neglected segment — for example, ‘plus size scrubs’ searches led to plus size wear featured on skinny models. Our email copy celebrated all women, but the imagery focused on big and beautiful women. (See examples here: http://promos.ideagility.com/email-examples/) Sell off the page results rose steadily; averaging 40-60K in sales per email.
- The back office should be in on this fun too. Take a hard look at your invoices to add special notes and read at a glance graphics.
- Celebrate your customers in public; like their posts, promote their wins on your company’s own social pages. Go out of your way to share generously and you may be surprised — one day your customers just might feel exclusive for working with you!