Page 80 - Duct Tape Marketing

Create Products and Services for Every Stage of Client Development

what the marketing hourglass system might look like for, say, a con-
sulting business:

Suspects: free newsletter, workshop, or teleseminar (a seminar
that is conducted conference-call style)

Prospects: $79–$149 self-study training courses
Clients: $500–$2,500 group training program
Premium client: $25,000–$40,000 annual engagement
Champions: promote group training/strategic partners

Ways to Create New Services and Products

Service to Product
One of the most effective ways to market a service offering is

to turn some aspect of that service into a product. In this way, you
can give a complicated, sometimes invisible service the right name,
a package, and a fixed price. When you are trying to get a client to
know, like, and trust your company, offering them something of value
that is easily understood and communicated can give you a leg up
over the other service providers who are a little fuzzy about what they
are offering.

Gabor Wolf of the Marketing Commando in Budapest, Hungary,
employs a unique market research process to determine with laser accu-
racy what products his customers want to see developed next year. He
tells his customers, “Next year we’re launching products A, B, C, and
D. These products will be sold at full price next year, no exception.
However, you can choose one, and only one, of them, and as soon as
the product is launched, you can buy it at a significant discount. Please
select the product that you want to buy at a discount next year!”

His company phrased the research question in a way that makes
customers think a lot harder and makes it impossible to give the wrong

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