What is Aspirational Marketing and How Can You Use it in Your Small Business?

The Small business show episode 211 for Wednesday, February 20, 2019 Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at businessshow Co. You know us, the show where we're by for and about small business. Sponsors for this episode include Abby, connect.com SBS and expressvpn.com SBS those are the URLs. I'm going to spell them later and tell you why you want to go there for now here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and this is.

Shannon Jean coming to you out from out on the west coast. How are you, man?

I'm good. Easy for you to say something.

Yeah. Somewhere I'm out, I'm out here. Somewhere near. I'm in California.

You're out there.

That's the right way to say it. Out there. Yeah, yeah, I'm out there. That's crazy, crazy stuff. But yeah, glad to be here. You know, today I was just telling you, you know, it's a little different format for this show because I'm asking, I have some questions about a topic that's really been top of mind for me lately and that is aspirational marketing. Not inspirational, but aspirational. And we're going to talk about that today and I'd love to get your input. Dave and I have some thoughts on it about number one, we talk about what it is and how we may be able to that in our small businesses and I would love, you know, feedback at Business Show Co if you listen to this episode, if you'd like to tell me, you know, oh yeah, you're right about this or wrong about that and we'd certainly love to hear your stories about how you may be using aspirational marketing.

So I have a, I have, I know you want to ask a bunch of questions. I have a question to ask.

Yes.

What is aspirational marketing?

Perfect. That's good. So if you look it up, you know, it involves, you know, you're kind of selling this vision of we're striving in a long, a long lasting and meaningful way to achieve or become something. In particular the urge for something better or unique, you know, to be, oh, I'm going to get healthy. Right. Gyms sell an aspirational type of marketing with their memberships. Right. Especially towards the new year, everybody is getting motivated, you know, fashion design houses where, you know, I'm in this, I have this luxury goods business now and I'm, I'm trying to learn a lot about it because you know, I buy all my clothes like at Costco. So I know nothing about fashion. But, but I know, I know a deal when I see it.

Right, right.

And it. So these fashion houses, they use places like Victoria's Secret, they use big shows, fashion shows and events to sell this aspirational vision where people that watch that they may never be able to afford an item or maybe fit inside an item, that piece of clothing or something that is being shown. Sure. When they go to the store and they see that brand, they've got this aspirational vision in their head like, oh, I want to be like this, I want to be associated with this brand and I think that they want to own the best thing. And these iconic brands that we recognize, whether it's Apple, Chanel, you know, Tesla, whatever it is that, that they've created this kind of aspirational vision. And I wonder how we can use that same type of marketing message in our small businesses. Yeah, that's what I want to talk about today.

Yeah, fascinating. Right? Okay.

And I don't know, I don't know, maybe it's possible or not, but I.

Think it is so giving people an, it's for some of the audience an unachievable, creating a product that is unreasonable or unachievable for some part of the audience, but using that as the brand definition and then giving them other things that do fit for them.

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

So it's like Apple with the, with the, when they came out with their watches. Right. And they had that one ceramic watch.

Yes.

99 of. Right.

Yes. Okay.

Okay.

That's right. And even then I think that was actually probably not a great example because they, it people looked at that and like, I don't want to spend ten grand on this, you know, gold, whatever. But, but if you think about like again, I'll lean on what I'm kind of familiar with lately is a, a high end fashion brand, you know, Prada or Louis Vuitton. Well, you know, most, maybe most people can't afford a five thousand dollar handbag or you know, three thousand dollars. Doesn't make sense. But in that same, in that within the product line there are affordable things that most of us could purchase that would align us with that aspirational brand.

Got it.

And, and I don't even think. And it doesn't just have to be a product. I think it could be a service as well.

Of course. Sure.

You know Gilbert Gutterow from Hotels Villas Direct last week and he was talking about these different levels of hotels. You know, there's ultra luxury. Ultra luxury, just Premium in. There's regular, whatever. I don't know how you break it down, but certainly if you want to stay at a hotel brand, they have all different levels to try to, you know, bring those people. And again, I don't know if that's a good example of aspirational, but just different, different levels of it.

Well, you know, you see the pictures of the, the suite atop the Westin or at.

And that's what they show on the website.

I stayed, I stayed at the W. Well, yeah, but I stayed in the, you know, the little 200 square foot dungeon. Yeah, yeah.

And when you go to the W's website, what pictures are they showing you? Yes, the big suite. The big. With a, you know, whatever. If you look at these hotels, they.

Know like they know that again, 99% of the people that are visiting will never, probably could never afford it. But whether they could or couldn't, will never even consider booking that suite. And yet that's what they show you when you come to their website. That's counterintuitive to practical marketing. Right.

Why are you showing people this is not practical.

Right, right. Why are you showing people something that does not that, that is not the product you want to sell them? That's aspirational marketing. Okay, so does it make sense?

I think one last example is I heard this phrase time ago, but it was from a car dealer that said, look, if you want to sell station wagons, you need to have a sports car in your showroom.

Right, Right.

Because you're drawing in this. Oh, look at that. And then there's a practical side to say, well, you know, I got two kids or three kids and I need to have a minivan and da, da, da, da. But you're still, you know, you're selling that, that aspirational thing that I could be that. That person.

Yeah, I have a fourth station wagon, but I could have a Mustang. That's an awful example because you could probably have both.

But yeah, that's right.

Right. Like that.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. So now that we kind of have an idea of, of what aspirational marketing is.

And again, now that we have that idea, I'm actually going to take a minute and talk about our two sponsors. Now that we've set this up. I am going to take a minute and our first sponsor today is Abby Connect. Now on this show, we have talked about how critical efficiency is for your small business. We obsess about it, right? I mean, like all the time I'm thinking about how to business More efficient. How can I make sure that the time that I'm spending is actually time I need to be spending versus something that either could be done by an automated way or by someone else or simply not done at all. Like a big part of efficiency is cutting that out. Well, one thing you can't cut out is your customer service. Right? You have to let your customers talk to you and you have to make them feel like you are listening to them. And what's one great way to make people feel like you're listening to them when they call? Answer the phone. That's why we want to talk about Abby Connect's live receptionist. Okay. To scale your business, it's important to have strong people supporting you, right? Who are the people that are front facing? Who are the ones that are offering great service to your customers and potential customers? But as a small business owner, it's hard and time consuming to build that strong culture when you've got people that need to be doing other things. And this is what's so impressive about Abby Connect because you get an entire team of professional, courteous receptionists available whenever you need them. They're specifically trained by Abby Connect in your business, right? They figure out what it is that you need and they train their receptionist. They're all at the same location in Las Vegas, so they work with each other. Right? This is not a distributed thing. They're all in the same place. And so you can be certain that they are perfectly trained to make sure your phones are answered and the calls are handled in the way that you would want for a fraction of the cost of actually hiring someone to be in your office to do this. And so we know that Abby Connect will make a strong impact on your business. And we've worked out a great deal to get you started. So what, you get no obligation free trial with Abby Connect. Then after your initial trial, you can get 95 bucks off your first bill. But the only way to get these two things, the no obligation free trial and 95 bucks off your first bill, is going to Abby connect.com SBS I told you before, I'd spell it and I'm going to. It's a b, b, y connect.com SBS that's a b, B, Y C O N n e c t.com SBS abbyconnect.com SBS Our thanks to Abby Connect for sponsoring this episode. Our next sponsor is ExpressVPN. Here's the thing. We all think that cybercrime is something that happens to someone else. You might think that nobody wants your Data. Your data is boring to other people. And you might think that hackers can't grab your passwords or credit card details, but you're wrong. Stealing data from unsuspecting people on public WI fi is one of the simplest and cheapest ways for hackers to make money. They can sit in a coffee shop or restaurant or whatever and sniff the packets that go by. And when there's something good, they can grab it. And when you leave your Internet connection unencrypted, you might as well be writing your passwords and credit card numbers on a huge billboard for the rest of the world to see. But you can take action like we did. You can protect yourself like we do and use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN secures and anonymizes your Internet browsing by creating a tunnel between your device, your phone, your computer, your tablet or whatever and the outside world. So that and that whole tunnel is encrypted and secure. So anybody sniffing your WI fi doesn't matter. They can't see what's in the tunnel. The most they can see is that the tunnel's going to ExpressVPN. And even that would take quite a bit of work on their part. It's super easy to use. It's one click and it works. We've been using it for a while here. I use it when I travel. I use it, you know, all the time. It's great. It just works. And it's less than seven bucks a month. You can get that same service from ExpressVPN that we have and it's the number one VPN service rated by TechRadar and comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. So here's how it works. You go to expressvpn.com SBS that's E X P R-E-S-S-V-P N.com SBS and you get three months free with your one year package there. It's a great deal for a great service. Again, ExpressVPN.comSPS and our thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, now we know what aspirational marketing is.

And yes, now we're going to aspire to see how we may use it in our small businesses. Right, Cool. So we, when I was, you know, taking notes about this, the thing I kept coming back to is a way to think about our marketing message and strip it down to some really basic aspirational details such as what can your customer achieve with your product or service? How can they create a better Self. How does your product or service make your customer feel unique? Really important on that one. How can your product or service make your customer feel smarter? And using that gym membership, how can it make them feel healthier? Those kind of things are thinking about them. You may not think about your products or services like this that often, but I think it's important if you want to go for this aspirational thing and make your product stand out. Especially if you feel like you're in a business that is slipping into a commodity type of situation where you know, you're, you're competing on price, which we, you know, we know it's just. Yep, you don't want to get in that, so you want to try to figure it out. And so one of the ways we discussed a little bit, and I want to go in a little more detail, is to create different levels of your product or service. And you can base this on a price point, maybe a feature set uniqueness. And the last would be, I think scarceness, I think is a good one. And when you create like a high end version of what you offer and along with mid and lower tier, it allows customers that look at that top level thing like, oh, I want that car with all those options. That's what I saw in the advertisement. And the small print says, you know, contains options, da, da, da, da. That adds 10 or 20 grand to the cost of your car. I want that one. But when they're there, well, okay, that's out of my price range, but what can I get?

I had a sales guy that we worked with for a brief period of time. He never actually worked for us, but we did some work with him and he was really sold on the whole bronze, silver, gold. He's like, offer the customer these three packages. He says you'll sell silver all day long. Nobody wants to buy the cheap one. Nobody feels like they can afford the expensive one, but they know it's there and they feel good buying silver. And it's, you know, to your point, all those questions that you asked are about how your customer feels about using your product.

Yeah, it's the same. You go to the, to a ball game or some event and they have the, you know, small, medium and large or whatever. And you've seen those things on online where they pour the large into the medium and it still fits. I mean, you know that that's a little shadier, but they're, you know, they're going to constantly upsell when you're at the restaurant and you order a beer and oh, do you want the 16 or the 20 ounce? You know, they're trying to, you know, get you into these different levels to be able to service each type of customer.

And that's the thing. When you pick the 16 or the 20, you now feel good about that decision. Right? You think, oh, I got the 20 because I know that I'm going to want more beer. The 16. Oh, I feel good, like that's enough for me. Right, but now you've chosen and that's fascinating.

Exactly. Yeah. So giving that choice as I didn't.

Even think about it in and of itself. Yeah.

Having choice is a really important one. And I'll give you an example again from this fashion world that I'm learning so much about. And when I started buying handbags and I'm a opportunistic buyer, right. I'll go to a company like Prada and we'll buy everything. Hey, of course we'll take it all, any condition, whatever it is. And I was really worried because a lot of this stuff would show up and be in pretty poor condition. So here you have like a retail priced Prada handbag. It's 2,500 bucks. Okay. And I don't know what percentage of the population buys a $2,500 purse, but I imagine it's pretty small, right? So we sell that version for about fifteen hundred dollars. So we've, we've advanced open that, you know, broadened our customer base.

But that's still, that's a lot of money.

Yeah, it's a lot of money. So then we just did this because we had to. We have, oh, here's a bunch of used ones that we received as well. So let's price this used one at $900. And then, you know, horrifically, there's a bunch in this shipments that are all beat to hell and have defects. And I go, okay, well let's try to get rid of those things at 600 bucks. And what I found was that there's lots of people that want the 1500-2500 bag, but they can only afford the $600 version, but they still get to carry that brand. And even though it has some marks on it that somebody that's like, I look at it and like, oh, look, this is really mark these marks here. And this is bad. And there's a tear in the inside here. Well, the average person that, that wants to carry that or may it's the same thing the person that wants to drive a Ferrari. There's, you know, there's probably cheaper versions that you know versus ones that are double the cost. So it turned out that our return on investment is much higher on the defective bags than it is on the brand new ones.

Yep.

And I really can't put too fine a point on this because it's, you know, those kind of product we pay much less for. So where you may double your money on the low end, but on the high end you're making, you know, much smaller roi, much smaller, you know, margin. So don't forget all these different levels that you can offer to your customers that maybe don't have the budget and you'll have to think about how does that work for your specific product or your specific service. But that choice.

Yeah, you have to make sure you don't, I don't want to say devalue, but that's right, you don't want to lessen this aspirational part of your brand. Which frankly is why, you know, Louis Vuitton is not selling these bags to people. It's why they're happy to market them through you.

Louis Vuitton, they don't want any of their customers that are going into a factory store or a manufacturer. This stuff doesn't exist to them.

But to be fair, Louis Vuitton is still very much selling these defect bags. Right. They just aren't doing them there. They're doing them through people like you. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? Yeah, it's really fascinating. Yeah, yeah.

And when you go like I was in New York recently and we, you know, I love to go to those stores and I'm trying to learn, learn as much as I can about how this all works. And you know, here at the Louis Vuitton store, you go in and sit down and the first thing they do is like, oh, can I pour you a glass of champagne? You know, because we're going to talk about spending a lot of money on a, on a piece of not leather, well coated canvas in many, in many ways. Thanks. So I just sat there and I was like, this is fascinating, you know, because it, they are selling the experience. You're buying a product but you're coming in, you're being treated in a very special way. You know, they're pouring you some nice, you know, nice drink and maybe whatever. Think about how you might be able to apply that to your business model or maybe you are and you could share with us how you're already doing. We'd love to hear about it.

Yeah. Feedbackusinessshow co. Yeah, it is Sell the experience. It's so true. And the problem is when you know, and I've found this in a lot of ways also in a lot of scenarios. It's true with employees too. You know, you get to see behind the curtain all the time. Right. By definition, you're the business owner. You have to know everything that's going on. And sometimes it feels disingenuous not to share everything that's behind the curtain with everyone. Right. But the reality is, and I mentioned employees, a lot of times, employees don't want to know what's behind the curtain. There's some things they want to know, but other things, no. And you have to understand that the people that work for you and the people that buy from you, it's a different mindset than you. And that's okay. So you don't want to mislead people. Example, you don't want to, you know, Louis Vuitton doesn't want to take this scratched up bag and shine it with a cloth and put it on the shelf and sell it as new. No, that's misleading. But they just like you said, those things don't exist to those people. The people at Louis Vuitton know that you could pay 2,500 here or find one with a scratch that you don't care about on it and pay 6. But they're not telling the customer that because the customer that's in the store is there for that experience. Right. Wouldn't feel, and this is where it comes back to what you said before. They wouldn't feel good about that person wouldn't feel good about that purchase. If they spent 600 bucks on something they knew was scratched. They want to spend 25 on something that's brand new. And you know. Yeah, so it's an interesting thing.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. And so I'm really fascinated with this and I'm looking for ways to apply it to other areas. I mean, I have a software business and I have some other stuff going on and we do vacation rentals. And I thinking, okay, how do I apply this aspirational thing to these different businesses that I'm in? And that's where it kind of led me down this path to talk about this today. Another big thing I've really learned from this luxury business is scarcity is very important for aspirational brands. And I don't know how we might make this work, but I believe most of it is artificial. But it's kind of sold as being real. And I learned about it. But by, you know, selling a particular handbag, it was happened to be a Louis Vuitton. Not to harp on that brand, but a person commented as on a listing that we had and said, well boy, I just called Louis Vuitton, I want to buy this bag. And they told me it was a two year wait and then I could put my name on the list and they would get me a bag. But it's two years. And I thought, oh, that is just brilliant. You know, because you can't get it. You're, you're just, you want it even more because it's just not available as much. And that, you know, come on, they got, they ought to be make millions of these bags, right?

Oh, they can make as many as they wanted, but they know that more people will buy the next bag. That's a limited run.

Yeah, that's right.

If they couldn't get the last one. Yeah.

And fashion is all about that. At the end of the season, this stuff is gone. We are not making this anymore.

Right.

And that becomes, that's a tremendous opportunity if you're a, an opportunistic buyer like me, you know, bottom feeder if you will. But I'm always looking for deals. And at the end of the season these huge companies or retailers are saying, well, we don't want, we can't have these shoes or this whatever on the, on the floor. I'm sure Apple or Computer Place do the same thing. Oh well, these are the older model MacBook Pro. We've got to move these out. And you know, we spent years buying that kind of stuff too. But the other thing I think we could talk about too is scarcity is not just for products. You know, if you're a small business, a consultant, a service provider, maybe you are scarce, maybe you're what everyone wants and they can't have you, but you have people that work for you that you can then send out. And you're, you know, maybe you have to make an appearance here and there, but you're the aspirational part of the business because you're the one they want to talk to. And, and I, I, I think it's a complex.

Everybody wants to talk to the owner or whatever it is. Yeah, yes.

And that's a hard, sometimes that's valuable.

Right? To, to, to leverage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like that's a hard transition when you're growing your company from a, you know, if you're the small business person and you're bringing on all these employees, you're going to have groups of People that don't want to talk to anybody else. And how you manage that separation, if you will, is really an important part. And we've talked about it before on the show, but you know, I thought about it. It's like, well, wow, that, that's really kind of an asset that you may be able to, to promote that scarcity. Well, if you buy this kind of contract, I am going to come over and talk to you. I'm going to make sure, I'm going to stop by every quarter and personally look at what's going on. You know, that that's something to think about. You know, it's kind of limiting in a way, but maybe you can set it up in such a way that, you know, it doesn't take too much of your time and there's a way to do it. Or I'm getting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you add, you add value, so.

Or perceived value and maybe actual value, but certainly perceived value. Yeah, yeah.

Hopefully you've hired people that are smarter than you. And I can remember telling customers, this is the person that you want to talk to. They're way better at this than I am. You know, I'm busy managing the company. They know about this specific technology or whatever it is, but people still are like, well, you know, no. So think about the way you present it. Your own scarcity can be an aspirational thing for your customers. Yeah, so, so the last thing on my list is, is that. And we touched on it a little bit, but we need to, you need to give customers a way to own a piece of your aspirational product or service, even if they never use it, even if they never actually get the product or, or use the service. And I, I, a good example of this is I recently had lunch with a group of business owners that are in the hunting and outdoor guide space. And, and I'm talking very high end stuff.

Okay.

These are people that, you know, if you want to go on a hunt with these guys to Alaska or some other crazy place, it's like 10 to $20,000. It's, it's a massive experience. You're flying in, they're taking you up in the mountains, getting these big trophy animals and most people won't do that or can't afford that kind of hunter experience, but they still want to buy the jacket that is used on that type of experience or the boots or whatever it is. So these guys, they're very small, smart, very successful. You know, one of them just sold their company for, you know, seven figures high, seven figures. That's what they're selling. It's 10% of their actual business is actually leading these hunts and everything else. And the other 90% are people buying the products and services that are kind of related to this. But it goes all the way down the food chain to the smallest, you know, 30, 40, $50 item.

Right.

And they get to own a piece of that, and they can think about it. Okay?

So this whole idea to kind of bring it around, this aspirational marketing is you define the vision, the lofty goal, or the lofty definition of your brand. Right. You define this thing that is your brand. But it doesn't have to necessarily be the thing everybody affords as long as it's there now, and you incorporate some element of that into your product line or your service line or whatever it is. Now everybody feels like they got the $20,000 experience, even though they got a $50 hunting knife that really, if they went down the street, they could have bought for $12 the exact same knife without your logo on it.

Yeah, you got it. And I'll leave you with what I think is one of the best examples is, do you know what Yeti coolers are? Highest chest. Right. So Yeti, they really defined the space where they created these ice chests using a process called rotoplast, I think rotoplastic, where the. The ice will not melt for like a week. I mean, it is incredible. That's pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah. And people do not need an ice chest that keeps you ice for a.

Week, but those for an afternoon.

Yeah, you got it. And those ice chests sell for about. For anywhere from 3, 4, 500. Upwards of $1,300 is, when I looked it up last night, is. Yeah, 1300 bucks for this big Yeti, man. And it's awesome. However, I was fascinated. Yeti's. Yeah. Yeti's a public company, and they report their earnings. So I just happened to listen in and read a little bit about them. Most of their revenue now, the over 50% comes from selling personal items like small drink coolers. You know, these aluminum mugs that you carry your stuff in to keep your coffee warm or to keep your drinks, you know, and they sell them for 30 to 75 bucks. And over 60% of their revenue now comes from those items. Because most people are not going to drop a thousand bucks on a cooler. Yeah, but they're like, oh, I got a Yeti this. And they work. There's no doubt about it. If it was garbage, they. People would buy them, right?

No, it's it's a real thing. But yeah, it's not the product they actually sell to most people.

Yeah, they built their brand around these unbelievable bulletproof bear proof coolers that keep ice, you know, frozen for weeks. Yeah, but that's not what they sell most of. So, so those are my thoughts, you know, about aspirational marketing, how we could maybe them for our small businesses. And again, I really would love your feedback. Come over to the small business support group at BusinessShow Co Facebook or Ratchet over there and share how you do it or you know, what we got wrong, what we got right. And you know, this is a learning experience for me and I'd love to learn more.

Yeah, man, this is great. You've got the wheels turning here. You know, that's the challenge, right? And I mean the challenge for all, all of us, including you, but us too is now looking inward at our respective businesses and saying, okay, what do we already have that is just positioned a little bit differently is now that aspiration and everything else sort of falls underneath that. That's really fascinating. And I yeah man, yeah, it's interesting.

Hopefully it will burst some of that thoughts in the implementation.

So if the implementation, that's it. Yeah, yeah.

And so if you implement some interesting and creative ways, please come back and share them with us so we can spread the love to everybody.

Yeah, we'll tell everybody what you've done, you know, with whatever level of detail you want to, you want to share.

Come on the show and talk about it, whatever you want or just send.

Us an email like you said before. Feedbackusinessshow co thanks so much for listening folks. This is great. Yeah, this is good. Makes me think. Thanks to our sponsors. Abbyconnect.com SBS ExpressVPN.com SBS thanks for listening folks. Keep living that charmed life.