June 3, 2009
Marketing Lessons From The Ice Cream Man..
We've been enjoying some hot and sunny weather here in south west Scotland over the last few days. The river Esk offers lots of great places for river bank picnics; and the brave and hardy folk were even enjoying a swim in some of the deeper pools.
And of course, the ice cream man was very busy!
Over the weekend I took Muffin on lots of walks and we "bumped into" the ice cream man on several occasions..
On Saturday he was in the market square during the busy lunchtime period, then during the afternoon he was positioned near the childrens play area. Late afternoon and early evening we saw him touring around the various residential areas.
On Sunday afternoon he was spotted right next to the cricket pavillion and later in the car park used by the many tourist who drop in on their way to and from Edinburgh.
In other words the ice cream man knew where and when he was likely to find the most potential customers and he positioned himself to maximise his revenue.
Is it really much different online?
As a smart marketer I'm sure you know where your target market hangs out, you'll undoubtedly have established a presence in the most popular forums, social networking sites and on Twitter.
However, do you know the best times of day to make forum posts, send out tweets and participate in networking groups?
Do you time your email broadcasts to maximise your open rate?
Do you publish blog posts to gain the maximum readership?
Have you considered that there may be an optimum time to submit bookmarks, stumbles and diggs?
Timing can be just as important as location!
If you are based in the UK and you're market is primarly North America then I'd suggest you wait until mid afternoon before trying to get some exposure.
After all, I've never seen an ice cream man selling in the dark. Have you?
Comments on Marketing Lessons From The Ice Cream Man.. »
Good insights, John. Unfortunately here in Canada, the ice cream man is selling his ice cream in the dark all too often… Only here could you literally have 90 degree F weather in the pouring rain, with miserable black clouds overhead!
– Cherilyn
I vote for Theme #8 – I like the way it looks.
You have to love the ice cream man –he's determined to sell whether anyone is there or not. He's not going to miss that opportunity if it presents itself. Do you know the story of the successful hot dog vendor?
Enjoyed the information. I've got a lot to learn about twitter. More later.
Nice article, John. I think I'll tweet it. The ice cream man also plays a loud jingle, which can usually be heard from afar… so you can usually start to think about ice cream before he arrives.
Mmmm…. ice cream
Sorry, I get easily distracted.
By the way, quick tip: You should add retweet links to your posts, so I can click once and retweet it. (See retweetlink.com/?tt=report for an explanation.) That would make my life so much easier. Now I'm off to manually retweet this post…
Paul Hancox (.com)’s last blog post..Dear Mr (Or Ms) Automated Twitter Following Bot…
Yes, timing is very important. And not just during the day. There are long term, seasonal shifts that occur.
Lately, for instance, I've been promoting an Australian real estate affiliate program by distributing flyers through Sydney. I'd had some good results with this in the past. But very recently I have had next to no response with this method. I suspect it's got something to do with the very cold weather we've been having here lately. Maybe it just makes people less curious and decisive?