When I go to a football match I love the smell of burgers, bacon, sausages and onions being cooked in the vans outside the stadium. The smell of the fat sizzling on the cooking plate draws me in and I instinctively reach for my wallet. It tends to be expensive, but I always buy a sausage sandwich smothered in onions and ketchup. My eyes roll inwards when I think of the pleasure to come.
Then sometimes I wish I hadn’t. I enjoy the sandwich, but not as much as that gorgeous aroma suggested I would. Sometimes the sausage is good quality and sometimes it’s pure gristle, but the wafting aroma never changes. In fact the more the fat and shit, the better the smell. But just imagine what would happen if there was no aroma to draw you in.
Sausage sales would plummet.
I’m not saying the whole thing is a con, but there is a clear distinction between what draws me in to make the purchase and what I end up buying. I think of it as marketing in its purest form.
Retailers use aroma to great effect, particularly at Christmas. Who doesn’t love the smell of scented candles? Although the smell isn’t always coming from the candles themselves! A friend of mine owns a company that wafts all sorts of smells into shops - and he's come up smelling of roses himself!
Your product or service is the sausage, but you are selling the sizzle. The sizzle is the promise of the experience to come when someone buys what you’re selling:
You’re not selling a baby alarm, you’re selling the parents a blissful night’s sleep.
You’re not selling weekend in Paris, you’re selling the evocative atmosphere of a Parisian café (and the rude waiting staff!).
You’re not selling a hose pipe, you’re selling a garden blooming with colourful flowers and plants, with a rich carpet of grass, that’s like walking on clouds, and with bees buzzing around doing what nature does.
Think about the poetry of the sizzle you’re selling, rather than that limp excuse of a sausage you've got.
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