Selling “Hot Buttered Toast” – A Marketing Idea to Beat The Recession!
This article is written and owned by Dhyan Atkinson
There are very few comfort foods on my personal list that
come up to the satisfaction level of “Hot Buttered Toast”
but, if you think about it, really good Hot Buttered Toast
is almost impossible to sell. Really good toast is
buttered and eaten moments after it comes out of the
toaster and, as simple a recipe as it is, the higher the
quality of the bread and butter you use the better the
toast is going to taste. Nothing, for example, will ever
match my grandmother’s homemade bread straight out of the
toaster slathered with real home-churned butter!
So what does “Hot Buttered Toast” have to do with marketing
in a recession? We have become a nation of cautious
spenders, perhaps rightfully so. For many of us who are
small business owners, selling, which is a challenging
business anyway, has started looming monumental. I know
many small business owners who are struggling hard to stay
in business right now all the while smiling at networking
events and saying “Oh yes, my business is doing fine.”
Sometimes posing zen-koan-like marketing questions can
stimulate really creative thinking. I once asked an
extremely busy, brand-new, business owner (with a minimal
marketing budget) how she could get the message about her
new business out to 200 new people a month? “Two hundred?”
she gasped. At first she was floored, but then she rose to
the challenge and got extremely creative! Within six
months, her database was full of contacts and her business
began to take off. I brainstorm with small business owners
over the “200 people a month” question a lot!
Recently I have also been asking people “What do you sell
that is as enticing as Hot Buttered Toast?” (Or if toast
doesn’t do it for you, you might ask: “What do you sell
that is as potentially compelling to people as the Thin
Mints the Girl Scouts sell?”) Once you locate the aspect
of your product or services that has a “comfort food” type
appeal, the challenge is to now verbally weave that
impression into your marketing message and start getting
the word out!
If your business is hurting because of the recession,
here’s a small creative exercise to try: identify some
aspect of what you sell that is as alluring as “Toast Right
Out of the Toaster” and then see how many ways you can get
this message out to “200 new people a month.”
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Dhyan Atkinson is a Business Skills Trainer and Business
Consultant/Coach. She has just started a gluten-free diet;
thus her nostalgia about “toast.” She specializes in
teaching small business owners the Five Essential Skills
they need to find clients. Check out her programs at
http://www.TheFiveEssentialSkills.com
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