It’s How You Say It!

I reckon one of the best offers you can make to lure buyers to open their wallets or purses (oops that’s a bit out of date in these almost post Covid times… to tap their card or phone) is to make the offer of “Buy one, get one free!” The effectiveness of that descends as you raise the buy quantity “Buy three, get one free!” will still work but not as well as the one-for-one offer.

And why is “Buy one, get one free!” such a great offer, why does it work so well?

Simple! It uses that magic word “free” which is almost irresistible to the human mind.

So why would someone make an offer like this… “BUY TWO AND GET 20% OFF ON THE NEXT PACK.”

There’s no magic word there and, even worse, you’d be surprised at how few people understand percentages, so many people won’t have any idea of whether 20% off is a good deal anyway!

So let me work it out… Woolworths has the tea at $5.85 and 20% of that is $1.17 so the offer is “BUY TWO AND GET $1.17 OFF ON THE NEXT PACK.”

Not a particularly beguiling offer is it?

Maybe for the same cost to the manufacturer “GET EVERY FIFTH PACK FREE!” would be better but it’s not particularly exciting either.

Hang the expense Mr/Mrs/Ms Tea Manufacturer! I reckon your aim is really to get people to try your tea (coz, if they already buy it, they are hooked on it!) so let’s burn a bit of the advertising budget and try “BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE!”

I reckon that’ll work and the beaut part is that, by the time they’ve got through two packs of tea, they’ll probably have become lifetime users.

Now, let’s sit down and have a nice cup of tea!