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It’s been raining here the past few days. It’s nice to see the warmer weather reappear, but hard not to let the gloomy skies get you down.
Do you notice any swings in weather impacting your B2B sales? What about your teams? Check out this cool song by The Dead Weather as we see what the experts are saying this week…
How Weather Affects Marketing
With new data, technology, and tools, we’re now able to leverage weather indications with much more accuracy. For example, when spring temperatures increase, hair removal products spike as bare legs hit the streets. At the same temperature, BBQ sales rise 200%.
Although rain can kill BBQ sales, lawn care purchases go through the roof – grass grows faster in wet weather. Even the presence of sunlight affects our moods and willingness to pay for products. We’re willing to pay more for certain products depending on sunlight conditions.
And when it comes to music lessons – bad weather can be a great marketing opportunity!
Does weather impact your B2B sales and marketing? How can we leverage some of those B2C strategies – rain or shine – to impact our B2B activities?
I wanna hear you! I’m certain there are some great examples of B2B companies leveraging this data successfully. I’d loved to know what you’ve seen or done!
Marketing Lessons from Fender Guitars
What would you do if 45% of your customers were first-time buyers of your product and 90% of those buyers gave up on your product within the first year? Fender Guitars CEO, Andy Mooney, faced this exact problem as he took the helm of the legendary 70-year-old company.
The first thing he did was dig into the research to understand who Fender’s customers were – and three remarkable data points emerged:
- Nearly half of all new guitar buyers are first-timers. 45% of every Fender guitar sold went to somebody who had decided to learn guitar.
- Half of those new buyers were women.
- Engagement with the guitar is a two-bump curve. People engage when they’re young, then fall off when they start having families. Engagement tends to spike again once the kids leave home.
Finally, Mooney did the math. The average lifetime value of a Fender customer is $10,000 in guitars, amps, and accessories. With a million new guitar buyers each year in English-speaking countries alone and that pesky 90% abandonment rate, simply doubling retention to 20% (200,000 committed players) opens up a billion dollars of new revenue opportunity!!
To address this opportunity, they told their customers, “I wanna teach you,” and developed Fender Play and Fender Songs – online services designed to solve the customer problems discovered in the research. Fender Play gets new players up and running quickly, while Fender Songs takes already-competent players and allows them to build playlists of songs they want to learn. It’s all made available at consistently high quality, yet the cost is kept low – at $42 annually it’s literally less than one live guitar lesson.
In stark contrast to the Gibson marketing flub we discussed last week, it seems that Fender is increasing engagement and building even more brand loyalty.
How are you following Fender’s lead with your own customers? Gonna take them by the hand and walk them to your house (proverbially, of course!) to foster that sense of community and loyalty to your brand.
As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello!
Looking forward,
Rick
Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat