Paul Woods

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Tonight, whilst at a local university awards ceremony I saw one of the most interesting marketing strategies I have come across… so smart… so simple… yet so very very effective.

The university essentially got their brightest students together in one room to reward them for their stellar academic efforts over the last 12 months.  These were not your regular students… these were the cream of the crop… the top 1% of students for the year.

The purpose of the night was to reward them for their great work… or so it seemed!

The Professor who was Master of Ceremonies ran through the introduction for the evening, and then before they had handed over one award (whilst everyone was still wide awake!) on to the stage came the walking sales pitch.

“Hi, I’m Andrew, and I am a Phd student…”

At this stage the lightbulb is going off in my head…

1. a very highly segmented target audience
2. that are happy because they are being rewarded for being in that very highly segmented target audience
3. that are actively listening because they are very happy to be party of the very highly segmented target audience

The ultimate sales pitch… obviously the university is looking for the top students to take on a further research degree… and they were all in the one room at the right time!

So how can we apply this to the real world (the world outside academia)

1. Compile a list of your top ten customers using a criteria of your liking.  It could be turnover, margin, customer sat, strategic fit… whatever
2. Reward them for being your top customers.  Take them out for dinner, wine them, dine them, show them a good time
3. Have your sales pitch ready.  Obviously if they are your best customers, and are happy to be rewarded as such, in most cases they will be ready to buy more.

We have done this in a round about way in the past… building what is essentially a premium access lunch with our senior executives… but this takes it to the next level.

And it works too… I would say from my experience tonight talking to award winners that about 20% will go on to do research with the university.  Not a bad conversion rate!

Technorati Tags: Customer Recognition, Reward, Strategic Marketing