In the past four installments I’ve explained a few ideas - in summary:
You can build relationships with people by ‘kissing’ them as often as possible. A kiss is a small gift you can afford to give anyone without thinking.
When you know who your likely customers are, you can sell your product most easily by giving it away, no strings attached, to people who seem interested. You do this by giving them a candlestick. Something of real value which allows them to experience what you’re selling, with minimal limitations, and then trusting the quality of your product, and the implicit contract formed by accepting a gift, to turn curious people into customers.
What are kisses? They require no signing-up, registration, logging-in, form filling or payment details.
Examples:
- iTunes free music Tuesdays
- Seth Godin’s eBook ‘Knock Knock’
- Starbucks free coffee shots
What are candlesticks? They have real value, they’re only given to people who are potential customers, they are given without expectation, they are the thing you’re trying to sell, they make the recipient feel special. They’re a really big kiss, and equally free of unnecessary restrictions.
Examples:
- Seth Godins eBook ‘Unleashing The Ideavirus’
- Hugh’s Stormhoek wine givaway
- A free book for every blogger
All sales and marketing starts by giving things away, information, items, products or ideas. Kisses and Candlesticks marketing is a way of refining that process to allow good products to sell themselves (which is a lot easier than selling them yourself).
Kisses create goodwill, stimulating interest in what you do and opening people to the message you’re trying to send. Candlesticks demonstrate trust, and give people enough experience with your proposition for them to make confident decisions. You encourage good behaviour by expecting it, leading by example and leaving the honest majority free of navigating the hoops and hurdles normally erected to repel the exploitative few. The respect this demonstrates further encourages people to trust and respect you.
By focusing on giving people the best chance to understand and experience what you do, you create the easiest path to a sale. Without sales-talk, bluster or showmanship you’re making the ultimate offer from someone who knows what they have is worthwhile. Try it for yourself, you’ll like it. Kisses and Candlesticks is about removing the catches.
Excellent series Sam! An endcap question for you: do you candlestick on the first date? Do you start out kissing then candlesticking, or do you start out kissing and build up to giving away your sweet sweet flower of a candlstick? I ssuspect the answer is both, but some thoughts one when one is more appropriate than the other would be interesting.
I stick my candlestick through the bottom of a popcorn container and let my date find it…