The no-brainer way to sell perfume

    Perhaps the first time you do it is the easiest.

    Perhaps I once got lucky, then got hooked.

    There is an easy and obvious way to sell perfume profitably. It doesn't take much imagination. It doesn't take much money. It doesn't take good taste or a great nose. It is simply a matter of being practical.

    The obvious, no-brainer way to sell perfume profitably ... is to sell your new perfume to your existing customers.

    If you think about it a bit you will realize that this is exactly what most successful companies are doing. And this is exactly the strategy that is expanding the distribution of perfume. Companies are realizing that, in many cases, they can sell perfume to their customers, even when their business has nothing to do with perfume.

    To make this work, you have to have customers -- people who have bought or are continuing to buy SOMETHING that you sell.

    This leaves a lot of would-be perfume promoters out in the cold. They don't have customers. Nobody to sell to.

    But is also brings in a lot of people and companies that DO have customers but have never thought of selling them a perfume.

    When you see a Bruce Willis movie ("Die Hard," etc.) would you think this is a guy who can sell perfume? But he's already on his THIRD perfume, thanks to the success of his first two, and thanks to his customers -- the viewers of his films.

    2013 saw the launch of 1,432 fragrances by RECOGNIZED perfume marketers. This number fails to take account of fragrances launched under the radar by companies such as my own.

    Not every customer group is ripe for a perfume, but a surprising number are. If you want to sell perfume, the obvious starting point is your own customers. If you want to sell perfume and you DON'T HAVE customers, find someone who does and team up with them. There are lots of opportunities out there!

Ideas come from many places

Someday on the left; Lola on the right

    When Justin Bieber's Someday launched, some compared the bottle Marc Jacobs Lola. The bottles, seen side by side, could suggest this comparison.

    But now look at Someday next to this Holm Spray atomizer, produced long before either Someday or Lola.

Holm Spray atomizer on the left; Someday on the right

    Was any one of these bottles an inspiration for any one of the other others? We have no way of knowing but the similarities help illustrate the point that ideas come from many places. For creative people this is important.

    People in the fashion world are famous for traveling to many places -- to get ideas, to see how people in other cultures decorate and wear their clothing or produce fabrics or design their houses. They look, they see, they gain inspiration, they adapt. Sometimes the adaptations are blatant, sometimes they are subtle. But the fuel for the fashion business is creative inspiration. Without it the business would die.

    Likewise the business of fragrance creation. Like fashion designers, perfumers travel the world in search of new smells -- foods, flowers, the rain on the forest floor, damp cotton, a banana leaf "dinner plate" at an open air "fast food" restaurant. The search for new scents powers the perfume industry. Without creativity the industry would die.

    Marketers of perfume also require constant travel, but their "travel" is of a different kind.

    Selling perfume is a competitive business, even if you are just selling to a few friends from your workplace. Even selling to a few friends from your workplace you are in competition with every marketer who is trying to sell them anything. Their funds are limited; their attention is limited. Sales don't come automatically, even from friends.

    Like the fashion designer and the perfumer, the perfume marketer needs ideas -- ideas that will inspire marketing strategies that can launch new fragrances successfully or expand the market for existing fragrances. If you follow the corporate news about major marketers of perfume and follow their advertising campaigns, you quickly notice that "big ideas" that make big sales are rare. Creative breakthroughs are are infrequent, even from highly paid professionals.

    But the larger marketers have the advantage of deep pockets and momentum. A new flanker for an older fragrance can push the franchise through another season. The shareholders might not be impressed with the results but they won't rebel either.

    For a smaller company lack of forward momentum is more of a problem.

    Clever marketing strategies are what give life to small, independent perfume marketers. Survival depends upon fitting into a niche where you won't get crushed by competition.

    But finding your niche is only a temporary solution. Why? Because when others discover what you are doing and that it is profitable, you quickly find yourself with imitators.

    It's not that the latecomers will put you out of business. If you're doing things right you may be well able to hold your own. But fighting off new competition can be costly, especially when the competition is stealing profits from sales that would have been yours.

    So you look for new niches; new opportunities. And where do you find them? Through your travels!

    For the perfume marketer it's not foreign travels that are required. It is "trips" to lands right under your nose, both within the fragrance industry -- the obvious starting point -- and then on into other industries, particularly the more dynamic industries, to mine for marketing strategy gold.

    Sometimes the "gold" isn't easy to recognize. Say you stumble across someone selling a lot of farm tractors. It may take you a second or third look before you realize that this guy is selling a lot more farm tractors than the average farm tractors salesman. Now you start to wonder why.

    Gradually you put it together in your head that this guy has a strategy for what he is doing -- and whether he recognizes it or not, it is a powerful strategy. But getting back to perfume...

    Roll that strategy around in your head for a few days and nights. Ask yourself, "Could what this tractor guy is doing work for my perfume?"

    So the "travels" of the creative perfumer marketer involve getting off the beaten path, where others are using time tested methods of selling perfume (which certainly should not be ignored!) but getting out and seeing what clever people in other industries (or in no industry at all) are doing to market whatever it is they are trying to sell.

    Each month I write a newsletter for our Perfume Makers & Marketers Club. For the first 100 or so issues it has just been called "Club Newsletter" -- not very imaginative.

    For the first 90 or so issues the article were all over the map. But based on needs, the focus has tightened and concentrated on marketing your own perfume. So now I am changing the name from "Club Newsletter" to Perfume Strategies. Uncovering bold marketing strategies and relating then to perfume is the theme of Perfume Strategies. Many of the ideas we have already reported and analyzed are brilliant. And we provide real numbers when we can.

    Even if you are currently marketing perfume, even if you are in need of fresh ideas for marketing strategies to keep your fragrance business competitive, you might not be ready yet for the Perfume Strategies newsletter which you can obtain only through a membership in the Perfume Makers & Marketers Club.

    But I have an alternative for you -- a free alternative. It is our other newsletter called "Perfume Strategies You Missed This Month." It offers synopses of articles which have just been published in Perfume Strategies, along with other useful tidbits.

    Ideas for profitable strategies are the lifeblood of any marketing business. In a fragrance marketing business they are vital.

    Sample what we offer out club members and see if you're not tempted to join us.

    "Perfume Strategies you Missed This Month" is free.

    Subscribe here.

Perfume Marketing: How do you find profitable opportunities?

    Some people make and sell their own perfume because they love to make and sell their own perfume.

    Others make and sell their own perfume because, for them, it has become a way to make money.

    Either way -- for love or for money -- your satisfaction is increased dramatically when your sales power up.

    There are many ways to sell perfume. Today, for perfume, there are many markets, and more are being discovered. You may have already scoped out a profitable market for your perfume, but wouldn't you like to get tips about possibilities you might never have discovered on your own?

    The "future" of perfume marketing -- which is still wide open to smaller companies and creative individuals -- will depend upon the individual marketer's ability to discover niches which they can "own" in the sense that they can thrive there without being bumped out of that market by a larger, richer, competitor.

    In our Perfume Strategies newsletter we mine for strategies that could be made relevant to perfume marketers. We dissect and analyze these ideas and present them as possible frameworks for profitable new business plans. Our Perfume Strategies newsletter is a service to members of our Perfume Makers & Marketers Club and is reserved for "members only."

    In our new "Perfume Strategies You Missed This Month" newsletter we give you a -- free -- synopsis of what we reported in Perfume Strategies that month. It's a great way to get a taste of our Perfume Strategies newsletter without it costing you a cent.

    And, even in this short version, you might find perfume marketing ideas that can be quite profitable for you.

    You can receive "Perfume Strategies You Missed This Month" by signing up here.

   (Note: this is a double opt-in subscription list managed for us by Mail Chimp. To receive the newsletter you must first ask for it and then, when you receive the enrollment confirmation email, click on the link in that message -- so we can be sure that you really requested the newsletter and someone wasn't just trying to send you an unwanted gift!)