Five Ways to Sell to Your Costanzas
Any Flonomics client can tell you that high shopper traffic doesn’t always translate into high sales—especially when that traffic includes a lot of Costanzas.
“Costanza” refers to the demographic of shoppers that may not be unemployed and living with their parents, but they’re definitely very careful in how they spend their money. They read all the fine print, analyze the pros and cons of every decision, and if so much as a candy bar gets stuck in one of your vending machines, they will stop at nothing to get their money back.
According to HelpScout.com, 1 in 4 customers qualifies as a Costanza: spending less than what they’d ideally like to spend when they visit your store, before visiting their favorite coffee shops to psychoanalyze whatever they did spend.
Luckily, Costanzas are susceptible to a few strategic marketing techniques.
Reframe Product Value
A Costanza may be careful with his wallet, but the feeling of saving money makes him feel like an architect. Try to come up with creative ways to reframe the value of your products that will make a Costanza feel like passing up on the deal would mean he’s “losin’ it!”
Bundle Products
A Costanza is unlikely to buy any of the gizmos and gadgets associated with your product, unless they come prepackaged in a special combo. Come up with clever ways to repackage your products in combinations of usability. A Costanza will be more likely to spend more money while feeling like he’s getting more value.
Read Between Your Own Lines
Pay close attention to the details in how you communicate. What may sound like “Yada, yada, yada” to you could make or break a sale with Costanza. A CMU study found that changing the words “a $5 fee” to “a small $5 fee” increased Costanza’s chances of buying from your website by 20 percent.
Translate Features into Benefits
Costanza won’t buy your insurance, but he might buy your peace of mind. Think about how to translate your product features into the benefits they ultimately deliver. Are you selling a couch, or “serenity now?”
Research, Research, Research
If 10 customers entered your store on Monday and you grossed $10,000 for the day, why did you only gross $1,000 when 100 customers entered on Friday? It sounds like Costanza prefers shopping on Fridays, or maybe he just had a 3-day weekend. Either way, Flonomics can help you test your hypothesis. Because knowing the days your store sees the most Costanzas can help you package your marketing strategies more intelligently.
Try implementing some of those techniques in your store, and Flonomics can help evaluate your strategy.
One more word of advice: if a store manager ever offends a Costanza, they should immediately apologize. Otherwise they run the risk of their customer feeling bee-bopped and skated all over.