Several years ago I came upon this article on one of those article marketing sites that were popular at the time, and thought it was cute. In it, a man shares how, by doing the simplest of things, his Grandmother helped shaped his life. I hope you enjoy it.
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Sometimes in looking back I do wish that I could tell you I developed my marketing skills at some nice Ivy League school, but things just didn't turn out that way for me. Being self-studied in marketing and advertising is the only way I could explain my background in marketing. My first experience in marketing started back in 1979. Me and my cousin Eddie where watching television. At the time he was 9 and I was 7 years old. There was no internet or "Laser" marketing. The "Big Time" marketers did T.V. commercials, snail mail, and print advertising.
As we watched the "One-Eyed Monster" we caught a great piece of marketing before the T.V. fried our brains and made us lose our vision from sitting so close. Well, that's what we where told by my grandmother. After viewing the commercial by Country Tyme Lemonade where the little kids where selling their lemonade from a stand out front of their house. We had a great idea! Not a unique idea, but nevertheless it was a great one to us. So, I may partially owe my first business and marketing joint venture to Country Tyme Lemonade. We jumped right up and headed to my Grandmothers room to get an approval on our lemonade sales. Seeing two cute little kids asking to become lemonade sales and marketing professionals how could she say no, especially as cute as I was? We made the lemonade, set up the stand, and created the sign for advertisement. Then my Grandma gave us our first marketing advice. "Hey, why don't you take your stand out closer to the street and flag down some traffic with your sign? That should get you a lot of customers." We thought that was a cool idea, plus for the first time we had permission to play close to the street.
Well, the first day went pretty good, but our marketing and advertising was still off a little because it was kind of hard to get folks to pull over even though we had several people to circle the block. All together the $1.10 we spent at the penny candy store down the street was well worth it. The next 24 hours we spent time thinking on how we could have customers lined up down the block. So of course we turned to our top marketer for advice. She said "You can start letting people sample your lemonade first, and you can also stand by the stop sign which will help stopped drivers see you better."
When we set out the next day to try out our new marketing and advertising approach everything turned out great. Sales more than doubled! Then I learned a valuable lesson that made sales go through the roof! Right before we called it a day I found our target market. The mailman who we missed the day before was now walking towards our house. I walked up to him and said "Mister, would you like to try some lemonade we are selling?" He said "Yes, that would be great because I'm very hot." I replied "Well, we have a lot of ice if you're hot." Not only did he buy 1 or 2 cups, but he brought a total of 5! At that point I had become a sales, advertising, and marketing baby guru. We looked on in amazement as he gulped down the fifth cup. after that I started looking for more people who where walking, hot, and tired. I did land a few more sales before counting our profit of $5.50. The next couple of days we made about the same amount. Give or take a buck or two. All due to our new marketing and advertising approach, and the later found fact that my Grandpa had friends he worked with at the Post Office.
This article was originally obtained from a site called "Articles On" which no longer exists. It was written by Mr. Penn, who at the time was owner of the "Work at Home Help Spot" site. I can no longer find him or his site, perhaps one day he will find us?
Updated 11/27/18
Updated 11/27/18
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