In the last post I discussed the auction that John Carlton was holding to sell the 20 places available at his upcoming workshop.
Well, the auction has now closed. The results are in and the clearing price was (drum roll please!)…US$1,999.
20 copywriters and marketers really have got themselves a huge bargain, in my (no so) humble opinion.
In the previous post, I suggested that a clearing price under $5,000 would have to be viewed as a disappointing result and that’s how it has turned out.
So what are the lessons to be learned from this?
Firstly, as I mentioned yesterday, there simply wasn’t the necessary excitement and value created around the product itself. All the focus seemed to be on the auction mechanism as being the “big idea”. John Carlton and his partner Stan Dahl seemed to take it for granted that people would be rabidly excited about the workshop and clamouring to get in. Well, they obviously were not.
Secondly, and another big marketing sin, there was an obstacle in the way of accepting the offer! Contrary to what a lot of internet-oriented marketers think, not everyone spends all day on the internet and not everyone uses eBay.
When reviewing this whole auction experiment, I’m reminded of the advice to courtroom lawyers about not asking a question unless you know the answer!
Auctions seem to work well when there’s a hot market but are terrible (from the seller’s perspective) when the market is not so hot. You see this in the Australian real estate market (where many properties are sold at auctions). When the market is booming, properties go for rediculously high prices. But in a slump, buyers can end up with a steal, especially if there’s a distressed seller.
What’s ended up happening here is that instead of there being a bidding frenzy, the 20 places for the workshop have been sold off on the equivalent of “lastminute.com” or the like. Not what was intended, I think.
On a broader marketing point, never get complacent about what needs to be done in a campaign. My mate, master copywriter Pete Godfrey, talks about that in the current issue of his “Emotional Ad Writing & Marketing Letter”. I’ll talk more about that in the next post (enough of my rantings for today!).