I guess I’m an ice cream daredevil. When I go to the ice cream parlor, I never ask for a pink spoon taste. I just go ahead and order what seems good — if it isn’t absolutely scrumptious — it is a risk I’m willing to take (besides I don’t really need to be eating ice cream anyway!!)
Buying an ice cream cone don’t require a huge upfront investment of time or money. Investing in your business is usually a bigger commitment. How do you know which product or service is the right fit for you? On the flip side, how to you convince your customers that you are a wise investment. Enter the pink spoon. The pink spoon is a simply delicious taste of your services that you give away for free to potential customers.
The concept of the pink spoon is not new in the online marketing community. Most websites with a mailing list offer you a “free report and newsletter cock full of invaluable tips (worth $97!). That’s great — and sometimes enough to give people a taste. But, people have widely differing learning styles and preferences for taking in information. For example, I actually hate videos — I usually have them play in a different tab in my computer and just listen. Some people really hate to read. What if you offered your pink spoon in a variety of flavors (like video and transcript) to allow you to connect with potential clients with differing learning styles. My pink spoon - a video on coming up with your USP offers a video and worksheet exercises. The exercises can be used by themselves and you can get a lot from the video without working through the exercises.
Some other easy ways of increasing the number of flavors available to your “taste testers”:
Add interactivity. In my experience, one of the best ways to build up a strong list is to hold a monthly free teleseminar and promote it like crazy. My clients hesitate on this because they believe that having free teleseminars devalues their paid events. I have found the opposite is true. Clients with regular free event build up an engaged following that is willing to pay more for their offerings. Other ways to add interactivity are specifically continuing conversation from your teleseminars using social media (see this video on how one guru uses his facebook wall to build community).
Record your content These days it is very easy to create audio content. know you better. Potential clients love to hear your voice and get to One of the easiest ways is to just record your blog posts into audio segments. AudioAcrobat makes recording audio as simple as picking up the phone and talking (you can also record your teleseminars to use as a freebie later). If you have an iphone AudioBoo makes it dead simple to make quick recordings and distribute them via Twitter. Video recording is also easy enough. You can record your webinar or use Jing to record quick videos from your computer screen or a Kodak zi8 to record quick “talking head” videos”.
Have something to read Sometimes, when I am in stealth mode (watching TV with my family while working on the computer) – I don’t really appreciate audio and video. It is easy enough to create something to read. You can have your last teleseminar transcribed (not as expensive as you would think), or you can create companion worksheets that give much of the same information – possibly with the addition of some do at home exercises.
What is your current pink spoon? How can you increase the number of “flavors” it comes in? Chime in below and let me know.
Ooooh, thank you for this. I was noodling around ways to offer new “tastes” and products this weekend, and you’ve helped me focus in creating a taste-test. Bravo!
Marsha Stopa recently posted..Desperately seeking summer