Why We Bought a Blue Yeti | A Sales Lesson We Can All Learn From

We are doing so many more webinars and podcasts these days, we thought it was about time we got ourselves a new microphone.

We needed one pretty quickly, so we jumped onto Amazon, and bought this beauty with next day delivery:

This is the Blue Yeti: Blackout version. It set us back £100, so not the cheapest mic, but not the most expensive either.

It arrived the next day, we swooned. We showed our friend Tiana Wilson-Buys, who has an office a couple doors down, she swooned.

We were very happy with the purchase… then we thought… we took extremely little convincing to buy this mic. We had looked for ones in the past, but when we came to buy, we went straight to this one and bought with little consideration. And now it has arrived, we are ‘showing it off’ like a prized possession.

So, we started to think why? How did this inanimate object SELL ITSELF so well!?

Or have we just gone crazy!

We decided we hadn’t gone crazy, but there were external forces in play here.

Here’s what we came up with, and here’s what we can all learn from it about selling (online and offline)…

Number 1: Recommendations.

The first thing we knew is that we had already heard of this mic numerous times. John Lee Dumas showed it off in a webinar we had watched, and David Bain from Digital Marketing Radio (catch our upcoming episode soon), also mentioned it to us, and we respect these people’s opinions. We don’t need to tell you the power of testimonials here… However in this case – it was coupled with something else…

Number 2: Memorability.

It isn’t the only mic that has ever been recommended to us, however the day we jumped onto Amazon actually ready to buy, guess what… it was the only name we could remember! Because it is called the Blue Yeti! Now that’s remarkable. It isn’t like all the others and called something like the AXR200 v2, or the AudioWave423.1 (completely made up names by the way). It is called the Blue Yeti!!!

What can we learn: The point here is how easily sharable AND searchable that name is, yet when it comes to naming a product or service, the majority are bland, or worse… forgettable. Because you see, all those other mic’s who’s names we forgot, may be better, and we could have tried to hunt them out, but that would of cost us something else that we didn’t have a lot of: time. Time is a currency we can use. If we save people time, by something so simple as having an easy to remember or easy to search name, we can win more sales.

Number 3: Design and Branding

OK, for this one, we will admit that we are probably more susceptible to this than the average person. However it is still a crucial point to not gloss over: design matters.

We love the fact that this mic looks good. We loved the fact that we could match the colour to our other equipment. We loved the fact that the design was clean and simple, and we weren’t going to have even more wires everywhere. Now, as materialist as this sounds when compared the features of a mic, this stuff really counts towards getting sales.

What can we learn: Sometimes we are too close to how awesome our product is, and can miss crucial reasons to purchase. We are 100% sure a competitor would be saying to us we wasted our money, because their mic is the same price and does X, Y and Z that the Blue Yeti doesn’t. However guess what, we don’t know all that much about microphones. We want one that does the job and that looks good.

So don’t downplay the design of your product. This kind of stuff can be the extra thing that gets you the sale. And if your offering is a service rather than a product, think of ‘design’ as the experience, and the credibility you project with high quality branding.

Number 4: Price

It would be easy to gloss over this one, with the whole ‘price shouldn’t matter’ card, but in this case specifically, we would be lying if we said it didn’t matter. It definitely wasn’t a deciding factor, but the fact that the price was ‘right’ for us helped. Would we have bought the mic if it was £500? No. Would we have got it if it was £30. No, it sounds too cheap.

What can we learn: There is a right price for everything. We just have to find it. Certainly though, price does affect perception of quality, hence why we wouldn’t have bought a ‘cheap’ mic.

Number 4: The Story

This is the clincher… why did this mic sell itself to us. This is something Seth Godin talked about in depth at the recent Q&A we attended… the story.

It’s the story. This mic isn’t just any mic. It looks like a yeti…

What can we learn: The first thing we do now when people come into our office is show them our Blue Yeti and how cool it is. We tell them the story about why we have it and the fact that if you twist it over it looks like a yeti. Who cares if it works, it makes a statement about us that we are trendy, cool, have money to spend on these luxuries and that we must be doing well. The Blue Yeti gives is a status symbol that gives us a story, a story that we have to go tell everyone about. And that’s the key to a successful product.

So what does your product/service say about the people who buy them? Does it give them a story that they just have to go tell others about? If not then, you won’t get as much word of mouth referrals as you would like.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments  box and tell us what your story is 🙂