In 1984, Jim Koch founded the Boston Beer Co., maker of beer Samuel Adams Boston Lager and answer the following question: How to use marketing as it is useless to spend more than the great?
Jim Koch responds:
Forget the media buying and advertising agencies. If you are competing with people who have far more resources than you, traditional marketing is useless. should start with a product - the case of beer or software - that is significantly better or cheaper than the established competition. also have to be that changing the perceptions of people, it will take time. It took 10 years to Sam Adams, achieve national distribution, and after 23 years still has only 0.7% of the U.S. beer market.
The next step is to find consumers whose needs covering the product . No need to be a lot of people. We address the imported beer drinkers 30 bars of Boston. We learned that one needs not only to convince the decision maker (for us, the general manager of the bar), but also the influencers (the bartender), and you need a 10-second pitch that can tell customers. Ours was: "Try this new beer. It is made by hand in small batches. You will like the taste. "
When you're trying to educate consumers, small things make the big think are below them . For us, that meant table tents, promotional nights and interact with customers to which we were heading. Twice a week, went to the bar and talked to people about beer. That helped me understand what made people not to drink Sam Adams.
I learned that people had an irrational attachment to imported beer that had little to do with the actual quality. So we put flyers explaining why our national beer bottles were better. Booklets 1.4 cents each - or about 2% percent of sales - but it was worth. In our third year, we distributed five million of them.
It started making TV commercials until 1996, and did not represent any significant growth. In the end, you can not fool customers into buying a product that is no better than the competition . That is the province of the well-funded companies. A small business has to be better and find a way - the more spectacular best - to show consumers that it is better. Otherwise, say goodbye.
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