On a recent trip to IKEA I was struck by how well they get it right, when it comes to marketing and sales.
If you have never been to IKEA, it’s a furniture and home furnishings store (originally from Sweeden) that has great designs at a low price. And what they do really well is SELL us!
When you first walk into an IKEA you are guided to start in the furniture section, where they have on display lots of furniture combinations – Mini Rooms where you can SEE how your new furniture might look in your home. They are creating ‘environments’ to help show you how to use their product. They are teaching you how to CONSUME their product.
Then they make their store ‘sticky’ by feeding you too! IKEA does not want you to get hungry and leave the store, so they put in a restaurant with great low cost food to keep you well fed and happy.
When you are ready to purchase your furniture, you must pass through their ‘Upsells’ area where they entice you to purchase accessories to go with your new furniture: dishes, lamps, rugs, chairs, office organizers, etc. So you, the customer, naturally grab stuff and pile up a whole bunch of other items that complement the furniture you are buying.
You want to be upsold!
It gets even better. When you get home and unpack your boxes of un assembled furniture, you get these great instruction booklets that show you how to put it all together. That is their equivilant of your ‘Customer Autoresponder’ that you attach to your products to get your customers to consume your product.
So take a visit to IKEA, if not to buy some great low cost furniture, but to watch and study how they are marketing and selling you.
And study how you can make your website more like IKEA!
7 thoughts on “What IKEA Can Teach Us About Internet Marketing”
IKEA gets me every time. The last time I went there was just to get some of their easy to assemble bookshelves. I ended up having lunch – their Sewdish meatballs with lingonberry sauce is to die for – and buying so much that I had to call a friend with a truck to help me get it all home. This is definitely a case of hypnotic marketing.
Great Idea Christina!! Thanks!
Yes- I love the way Ikea does things and the parallel Christina draws is great. Thanks Christina, you have a great way of seeing the core similarities of things and simplifying them.
OMG you’re right! I grabbed my 2009 IKEA catalogue and it’s set up the same way – except without the food, though it’s advertised as being in the store inside the back cover. Most everything is set up in little room scenes showing how it looks and how to use it, and then the individual furniture items are shown, rather than just pages of furniture. And you’ve got to pass through accessorizing pages appropriately placed here and there. Online they have all kinds of tools and info, the “customer autoresponders”
Thanks for bringing IKEA’s marketing to my/our attention. I’ve learned a lot.
First a confession:
I’m a Lingonberry drink addict. It’s so good at IKEA. I go there just for that. Talk about sticky!
But I want to add to the discussion. One of the chief reasons I keep going back is all their stuff wears well and is consistently a good value. Which, of course, has parallels in our own businesses.
That is, because they are consistently good I keep going back. That’s what I am constantly striving to do in my business: be consistently great at what I do so people keep coming back.
In my view, that is IKEA’s biggest lesson.
Danie Hall
Author, Speak on Cruise Ships: 8 Easy Steps To A Lifetime of Free Luxury Cruises
http://www.speakerscruisefree.com/
IKEA creates a total buying experience. It is like everyone keeps telling us, stop selling and start getting your customers to buy. They do it so well. Excellent idea, go and take the walk through IKEA. I would be surprised if you got out without buying something. How can you get your prospects to do the same thing.
Brilliant, Christina – This is an outstanding example of upselling, whichever I truly never thought about until you mentioned it. You see all types of consumers there (from the elite to the frugal), and they have something for every taste. They even have a playplace for the little ones! – DJ D.
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