My son turned 5 on Sunday!
It was a proud and quite emotional time, lots of life changing family events happened around the time of his birth and at times I wondered how we would make it through the first year, never mind to 5 years!!
We wanted to mark his 5th birthday with a lovely party for him where he could have all his friends around him and really have lots of fun. He’s at the age that he would remember it as well.
I started planning for a party in the house with a face painter, entertainer, bouncy castle in the garden, party food, a Ben 10 birthday cake, kiddie goodie bags with really cool gifts inside and cute little personalised cupcakes in a jar…. the list goes on…
I started getting myself in a tizz about everything, if all the children and their parents would fit in the house safely. Then the entertainer had to pull out and the bouncy castle people said the one that we wanted was now damaged. Amidst all this I had to go away for a 10 days and would only get back a few days before his birthday.
A week before I was due to leave I had one of those sales calls from our local leisure centre. The guy on the end of the line must have caught me off guard and got me chatting about the birthday party. He presented to me a very clear and simple way to alleviate my stress…Have the party at the centre, they would take care of everything, all I needed to bring was cake.
So we did just that, I cancelled everything and had the party at the leisure centre. The children came in their costumes – there were 3 Spidermen – they had an entertainer, played lots of games, had lovely food, got great goodie bags and made a real mess of the place. And we didn’t spend as much money as we would have before.
I was happy, my boy was happy, the other children were happy. The end.
This story is nothing new, mum and dads up and down the country can relate to this.
This story also doesn’t tackle any hugely complex strategic marketing topics, just a very simple one:
Be very clear on the problem your customers have and how you can solve it.
My problem was how do I put on a fantastic party for my son within a limited time frame that will not stress myself and my husband out.
Our local leisure centre presented very clearly and concisely exactly how they would do that and save me money at the same time. It was a no brainer.
Now not every client’s dilemma is a straight forward as that one but the answer is still the same: present a simple clear and concise way in which you can solve their problem and provide better value.
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