If you’ve ever been to Disney World or Disneyland, you know just how masterful and intentional Disney is at selling and extracting as much money from guests as possible. Disney is bold and relentless when it comes to pricing and asking for the sale and therein lies the gold for business owners. Here are a few strategies I took away from my last visit to Disney World:
Make it about the experience and not the price. Does anybody do it better than Disney? Doubtful. Disney wraps everything they do with “unique experience” and it’s a fundamental part of the Disney magic. It’s how they charge almost $40.00 for a simple breakfast buffet that has random Disney character visits during your meal. By making it a memorable experience for the kids, the parents open up their wallets.
Make it fun to do business with you. Even the grumpiest tight-wad will manage a smile at Disney. A huge part of the Disney experience is about the fun memories they create for families and generation after generation of visitors attest it is indeed “The Happiest Place on Earth.”
Create a captive audience. Disney has done a tremendous job at keeping guests in the Disney bubble during their entire visit. For example, we stayed at a Disney resort, took Disney buses and monorails, ate at Disney restaurants, shopped at Disney stores, etc. and during this time, we were exposed to many marketing messages and opportunities to buy. Can you do something similar in your business so when customers enter your world, you’ve captured their attention and focus? Membership sites and newsletters are simple ways to create a captive audience.
When you market with information and become the authority in furniture or mattresses, to your customers, you are putting them in your marketing bubble and eliminating competition.
Offer many opportunities to spend money. A Disney sales experience starts when you book your trip and does not end until you return home. In between you’re presented with many different opportunities to spend money, Disney is not bashful when it comes to frequency and pricing. It’s truly a spectacle to behold, but because they do such a great job at creating a special experience, nobody seems to notice. Next time you go to Disney just make peace with the fact that they are separating you from your money and look at it with new eyes. Want to make your money back tenfold? Look at Disney through the eyes of a marketer. Do not say, “But my business is different”. Ask this question instead, “How can I adapt that idea to fit into my business?”
Purchase in advance and save more. Disney has studied human psychology and knows how to press the right buttons. One smart strategy is offering special savings on “purchase in advance” offers. For only a few hundred dollars more than what I spent on four, three-day passes, I could have received four annual passes that would allow unlimited visits to the Disney Parks for an entire year. Their slogan is “The more you play, the less you pay per day!”
So we are visiting Disneyland in two weeks and I can’t wait to go! We as a family will make memories for a lifetime and that is the primary reason for going. I will drink up every second of that experience as I know at fifty four how precious life is. I have a confession to make. My inner marketer is going to have a field day! I will jot down at the end of every day all my marketing and business lessons that I learned at Disney so that I can pass them on to my dealers.