The "Addiction" Marketing Model

If your Defensive Entrepreneurship product or service can be sampled you may want to try the addiction marketing model.  What is it?  Giving samples away for free until your customers are hooked on it.  Then you start charging them your price.

This approach may sound familiar-- drug dealers often use it.  I am by no means suggesting you engage in illegal activity.  However, this model is used successfully by big businesses everyday.  Can you think of three businesses that do it?

• Mobile phone companies
• Shaving razor companies
• Food companies

Mobile phone companies give the phones away because the money is really in the on-going service-- the minutes.  It has work-- nearly everyone carries on in less than 30 years on the market.  They have been so successful, that payphones are disappearing . . .

How many free razors have you received-- I can count almost a dozen.  The key here is that the money made is on the blades-- an on-going expense.  There is another marketing concept named for this-- the razor/razor blade model.

Food companies send free samples and free sample coupons all the time.  I recently got a $1 coupon for a product-- once I used it, I got a $0.75 coupon, and then a $0.50 coupon.  See a pattern here?

This approach works because customers become accustomed to the product.  Once that happens, price creep begins-- the price slowly rises. 

While I don't believe in working "on spec" (speculation), but I do think if you can sample your product or service-- it might be worth it.