Find The Hidden Money In Your Business And Double or Triple Your Profits
February 8th, 2012 by Diane Conklin under Information Marketing, Marketing. No Comments.
If you have ever been on a cruise, you may have noticed some great marketing lessons. Every day, on cruises, they have a drink of the day and they automatically put that special in a different cup than the rest of the drinks, and you have the privilege of paying 
$1.50 or $2.00 more for your special drink every time you order one.
Now, if you give them back the cup, they reduce the price, but a lot of people keep the cup as a souvenir. And, if you don’t tell them not to, they automatically bring your next drink of the day, in another plastic souvenir cup, and they charge you more.
Now, I’m not advocating that we do things in our businesses to charge more just for the sake of charging more, but you’re on vacation, you’re having fun. Do you really care if you end up with a few special souvenir cups?
And, that’s just one example. Then there are little containers for drinks, in fun things that might be in the shape of part of the ship or one of the characters or something like that. They charge more whatever drink you have inside these too, because it is in the souvenir cup. One of the cruise lines has a drink that comes in a little monkey and it’s made out of a coconut.
Another interesting thing that they do with the drinks, if you walk onto the deck where the pool is and where all the food and stuff is. Especially the first day, there are always people standing there with a tray filled with the special drink of the day.
And, on at least one of the cruise lines, you don’t pay with money, you pay with your room key card. Certainly, if you had an opportunity to look at the numbers, everyone spends more money with the room key than they would if they were shelling out cash.
Now, let’s talk about wine. It was very interesting the last time I cruise, there was a new wine club. When you got on the ship you had the option to pay, $40 or $50 dollars whatever it was, to be in the wine club while you were onboard. You got the selected wine which the Maitre D’ picked for you that night, the one he determined to go best with the particular meal and there were some other things involved in it, but it was pretty amazing to look at all the ways they have come up with to provide opportunities for additional spending while you’re on the ship.
A few of the other things they do is there is this soda card that you can buy when you get on the ship, if you drink Coke or Pepsi or Diet Coke or whatever. Instead of paying for every one you drink, you can pay a flat fee of like $36 for a 5 day cruise. You have to decide is it worth it or not at $2 per soda.
There is also a supper club on some of the trips where you can go in a private restaurant, it’s very small and it’s $40 or $50 bucks a head per meal. They have a menu and you can order off of that instead of eating in the main hall, and it’s all very, very nice. You could also have dinner with the head chef and the Maitre D’ at a closed off room with a table. There was an extra fee for that, like a 6 or 7 course thing and wine that was all included.
The point is, they’re ingenious at doing these things. The spend time thinking about and strategizing ways they can take their already captive audience and monetize it, and not monetize it by hundreds and thousands of dollars each time because they didn’t ask me to spend hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, they asked me to spend an extra $1.50 or $2.00. They asked me to spend $50 or $60, not big amounts. But, when you got several thousand people on the boat, it can turn into big money over the course of the cruise and certainly over the course of the year.
How can you apply these things in your own business?
Look for areas where there’s hidden money. Look for areas in your business where you can add things that people might want, maybe not as a souvenir but as additional content or services. What can you add in your business that people want, and are willing to pay for, while they’re making other purchases, that can easily be added on? There are all sorts of ways to do this. There are all sorts of hidden money in your business and your challenge is to go out and find it in the way the cruise lines have.
