You're vacationing with family. The weather isn't cooperating. What to do with folks of all ages? Tour a manufacturing plant, of course. Odd as it sounds, many companies open their facilities to millions of eager onlookers each year. Why? Because it pays off BIG.
Families all over America tour the plants that make some of their favorite foods and products. Saturn does it to build loyal car buyers.
Newhouse's Syracuse Newspapers gave tours introducing a new press to sell more newspapers. Two Vermont-based firms, The Vermont Teddy Bear Company and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, do it and promote each other's tours. Visit one and get directions to the next.
Want a teddy bear? Don't just buy any old pre-fab bear. Make your own. The bear specialists at Vermont Teddy Bear Company show you how. Located outside Burlington and employing 311 (200 full-time employees and the balance seasonal), this operation pulls down $39 million in sales. What you may call a business of cutting, sewing, stuffing and shipping has been transformed into an experience for the customer. After your trip through the factory, from fabric cutting to TLC shipping, you can either purchase a high-quality specialty bear or customize one of your own. Select the type of bear, a special heart to insert, how much stuffing, a name, and from the personality wheel, choose special lovable traits as the stuffing is being blown into the pre-sewn body.
Your teddy's complete when you set him up with clothes and toys. Carry your new bundle and his birth certificate home in a magical looking box complete with air hole. Should he ever need repair, just send him to the VTB clinic. He'll come home safe and sound, donning a hospital gown and carrying a pair of crutches. Wow, what a venture! Lifetime guarantee included. Vermont Teddy Bear runs tours every 15 minutes with almost 40 people per tour during the summer months. If you think you're walking out without dropping $60 or more, you're dreaming. Don't forget to take the postcard directing you to Ben & Jerry's Ice cream only minutes away.
Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream in Waterbury, Vermont give tours starting every 20 minutes all day long. The tour in a nutshell: six-minute short movie, a viewing station over the production floor, then off to a tasting room where everyone gets to taste two samples. Finally, a walk through the hall of history that has pictures and mementoes leads the group to the generously-stocked company store. Shirts, pins, aprons, and more await eager tourists who top off the experience with all-natural, sweet tasting ice cream treats...all of it offered at full retail pricing, too. Everything, like The Vermont Teddy Bear Company, is choreographed to the letter, revving up anxious buyers willing to add to the experience by dropping dollar bills. Now a Unilever subsidiary,
Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream was developed on a three-pronged mission: product, economic, and social. Remaining true to its philosophies, the 800-employee company raked in $237 million in 1999, donating 7.5% of pre-tax sales (that's about $1.12 million) to philanthropic recipients. Not too shabby for two young guys who took a correspondence course on ice cream making and tried out what they learned in a garage.
So what about your product? Could you do this if you manufacture handbags, bowling balls, books, or computers? Even if you produce industrial equipment or have a floor of brokers, you can turn your operation into a marketing experience and one that gains loyal customers. Isn't that why you give tours of your office when you have guests? People like to be involved. People want to know, are curious, and are looking for entertainment.
Interested in conducting Experience Marketing? Here are some tips:
1. Plan out your process on paper to see what's the most effective way to teach your customer.
2. Clear a path or build walking areas behind glass that allow access without hindering work flow.
3. Create a script for the tour including items that make people laugh or be surprised. If you pump out enough marbles in one day to fill a 747, tell them so.
4. Hire guides with personality and structure tours to make the experience consistent as well as fun.
5. Put up signs, samples, quotes, and pictures along the way. In five years, your story is history. In ten, it's ancient history about how you've grown and where you're going. People like to be inspired. They want to be around others that are successful.
6. Put out the word you offer an entertaining and educational tour. Remember, the tour does not have to reveal competitive secrets or allow total access. Ben and Jerry's did not offer any recipes! Use current product packaging as a medium for the invitation to stop in anytime, and give value when tourists get there.
7. Give something away: a pin, a mug, or a sample of something off the line. Wine manufacturers could give away labels signed by the wine master. What piece of the process could you stamp and give away? Vermont Teddy Bear gives a piece of cloth stamped in the form of a bear. Small cost to get little Karen or Joey to ask mom and dad for a souvenir.
8. Wrap it up in a showroom or a gift shop. A costume jewelry company in Rhode Island used to finish its tour in a lavish setting to put buyers in the mood.
There are financial benefits to developing the experience that builds customer loyalty. This includes the fact that you will see your facility as an outsider and demand a clean, safe, working environment. There's no cleaning up for the visitor coming on Thursday and the processes of the organization meet high quality demands everyday.
Regardless of whether you have the means today to offer factory tours, you can still engage Experience Marketing. Put your creative energies to use and think about how your firm can turn the buying process into a recreational experience. When you appeal to curiosity and elicit positive emotions, you build customer loyalty and increase sales. All you have to do is open your doors and your mind to Experience Marketing.
