How we change what others think, feel, believe and do

Shout 'Sale!'

Disciplines > Marketing > Pricing > Shout 'Sale!'

Description | Example | Discussion | See also

Description

When you are putting on a sale, make everything shout out about it. For example:

• Use lots of marketing, from adverts to leaflet drops to social media announcements.
• Put huge 'Sale' signs up outside, in the windows and across the store.
• Have large and frequent signs indicating how much people could save.
• Make pricing signs on and above product displays big and attractive.
• Use plenty of red ink and exclamation marks everywhere!!!

In other words, customers should be in no doubt that this is a big deal, not just a few reductions here and there.

Example

In the January sales, a store has bigger sale signs than all the other stores around it. They attract more interest and traffic than the other stores.

An online store changes its headline banner for a sale such that it is advertised on every page. New menu areas are included for 'bargains of the day' and so on. To help this, the site has already been structured so a global variable easily can cause page switching.

Discussion

Emotions are infectious. When you show enthusiasm for things, other people will pick up on this and feel enthusiastic too. Lots of signs can transmit and amplify such emotion.

People can be suspicious of 'sale' signs when they are small and infrequent. By association, it may well seem that the sale is small, too, with few items and not very much in terms of reductions. The reverse is true, too. When you put a lot into advertising the sale, customers will assume there is a lot on sale at good prices (after all, why else would you go out your way so much to promote the sale).

See also

Confidence principle, Appeal principle, Multiple Signs