No, Mall Shark, We Do Not Want Softer Hands or Why You Should Know Your Audience
Written on December 10, 2008 by Susan Payton
So Wendy Piersall and I are strolling through an outlet mall in Orlando last week, and the mall sharks were circling. You know, the people who stand at the kiosks in the middle of the mall that squirt you with perfume, take your picture, massage your head or otherwise molest you in the vain hope that you will buy their product?
“Look away, Wendy, look away. Do NOT make eye contact,” I hissed.
I didn’t check to see if she obeyed, but at least three vendors aggressively tried to stop us as we sprinted away. I said to Wendy, “Boy, how do they expect to sell with that technique?”
She looked at me knowingly and said, “Blog post!” So here we are.
I assume these people are paid commission. I know my 3 days working at a mall kiosk in 1994 netted no sales and no effort from me to sell name definitions in picture frames (ah, I’ve come a long way, baby).
So here’s why this technique is wrong, just in case you don’t know:
1. It’s in-person spam. Annoying and unwanted.
2. It’s targetless.
3. It’s offensive.
4. If I want your product, I see it there. In the middle of the mall, for all to see.
5. It’s usually to hawk something that’s not that good.
In the end, we did stop at a kiosk in the middle of the mall. Wendy bought her daughter a present. But guess what? The employee didn’t even approach us. And she got our business anyway.
So why should you know your audience?
1. They have different needs.
2. Not everyone is ready to buy at the same time.
3. They like being approached in different ways (sticking a poky head massager probably appeals to about .0001 of the population).
4. They like to think you know them.
5. You’ll sell more.
When I’m at malls, sometimes I make eye contacts with the people selling beauty products on purpose to see if they do anything about it. To this day, nobody has tried to sell me any beauty product yet. Hehe.
During college, our theatre company does shows on campus. Many people used the more in-your-face technique of flyering, but I found that just not working for me. I found people to be more receptive of the flyers if I am less forceful and intrusive. However, the more in-your-face techniques do work well for some. I guess it depends on what kind of person you are as well.
Kelvin–
It’s difficult to use the shotgun effect (throwing it out there and seeing where it sticks) and seeing real results. You can expect about a 1% return on marketing like this, so for every 1,000 flyers you hand out, you will get 10 people interested. It’s just not worth it to me.
So true, there are growing numbers of businesses who use that strategy. Some are okay to me because they are just asking mall-goers to try their product (product sampling) but others are really annoying because they are tricking people that they will give instant freebies; some are worst because they will ask you if you have a credit card (insurance companies with recruitment kiosk inside malls)and yes, we can call them in-person spammers.
It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place.