Joe’s Café Marketing System – Part 2

[Will Edwards]

Joe’s Café Marketing System – Part 2

By the way, if you missed Part 1 – it’s here …

The Joe’s Café Marketing System – and it works!

Hi Guys

Getting a quick bite of lunch at Joe’s place the other day, I was struck by what the person at the till said when I ordered my coffee and sausage roll.

She simply said, “Do you want regular or small?”

Now I had ordered the regular, without much thinking, and sat down and begun to tuck-in to that sausage roll when the thought struck me that this regular coffee was a pretty large cup. In fact, it was so large that you could probably get away with calling it a bowl. It was too much for me, at least – I should have ordered the regular.

As I began chatting with the staff, I asked, “Just out of interest, how large is your regular coffee?”

The person behind the till picked up what looked like a normal-sized mug and waved it in front of me.

“Hmm” … I thought, “so small, around here, is actually normal-to-large; and regular is actually massive!”.

There was no need to ask the question: do you do large? Because, given the size of the regular coffee – it would need to be bucket-sized (lol).

As I went back to the serious business of consuming my lunch and drinking as much of the brown-stuff as I could seriously manage, I gradually realised the marketing lesson I had just witnessed. By calling his options small and regular – rather than regular and large – he had actually made a sale of the larger size rather than the smaller.

There is no question that if I had been asked, “regular or large?”, I would still have said “regular”.

So Joe is definitely selling many more large cups of coffee than he otherwise would if he were to name his purchase options differently. A brilliant stroke!

The principle works, I believe for psychological reasons; and it only works if the prospect is ready to buy. So it is not a substitute for trying to convince them with great copy writing. But once you have convinced them to buy, you can give them a similar choice - just like Joe does - right there at the Buy Now Button.

So there it is, another lesson from Joe’s Café. Think about this principle in your selling. Instead of offering your normal product with a purchase-option to buy the super-duper version, you could try offering the regular version (which is your super-duper product) and a cut-down version which you could perhaps call the ‘lite’ version.

Then, who knows, when your customers are faced with a similar question as they hover near the Buy Now Button - considering whether to go for the normal or the lite version - perhaps a higher number of them will choose regular too ... which translates to more money in the bank for you!

[PeteHarrison]

An absolute classic
I used to use this when I ran a pub (bar) for measures of wine (175ml for small, 250ml for regular) - very few people ordered a small glass of wine but, when I used to ask "regular (175ml) or large (250ml)" about 60% went for the "regular".

Human nature I guess

Pete

[Will Edwards]

Hi Pete

Yes - some interesting stats you quote there too!

Will