The Book

This blog is about the upcoming book

‘Marketing Lagniappe – What’s Your Purple Goldfish’

Here is the brief synopsis:

Traditional marketing is broken and for the most part ineffective. The reason is that 90% of marketing is focused on prospective customers.  Companies are so preoccupied on getting new customers through the purchase funnel that they forget to deliver an exceptional customer experience.  This book is about flipping the funnel by investing your efforts in an exciting concept called ‘marketing lagniappe’.

Lagniappe (pronounced lan-yap) is a creole word meaning ‘the gift’.  It’s defined as a small gift given by a merchant at the time of purchase. It’s an extra unexpected gift or benefit . . . something thrown in for ‘good measure’.  For today’s consumer ‘value’ has become the new black. Marketing Lagniappe is about putting your customers first by giving that ‘little extra’ in order to exceed expectations.

The book discusses the 5 main ingredients/rules of lagniappe: Relevant, Unexpected, Limited, Expression and Sticky

It provides dozens of examples including companies such as Southwest Airlines, Kimpton, TD Bank, Stew Leonard’s, Doubletree and Five Guys that are using marketing lagniappe to generate word of mouth and more importantly word of mouse.

Why Purple Goldfish?

The size of a goldfish (i.e. your business or career) is dependent on five important factors:

- Size of the environment (i.e. the market)

- Amount of goldfish in the same environment (i.e. the competition)

- Quality of the water (i.e. the business environment / economy)

- Treatment during its first 120 days (i.e. start-up)

- Genetic makeup (i.e. differentiation)

The only factor you have control over is how you differentiate yourself and your product or service.  This is your ‘purple goldfish’.

THE BOOK IS COMING IN SUMMER 2010.  STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES