Why this $1,600 Baby Bassinet has the Best Marketing Ever (and what it can teach you about your business)

Customers make purchases based on one of two factors: price and brand. That’s it. Obviously, the fine people at SNOO know their target clients aren’t bargain-hunters, but they do know that they need to do a really good job of convincing their audience why they should buy a baby cot that costs 8 times the average price.

This is the SNOO. It’s a baby bassinet that costs $1,595, and it might just have the best marketing I’ve ever seen.

For those of you who don’t know, I recently had a baby, so this product is acutely aligned with my current interests, but bear with me; this is going somewhere.

They market the results, not the product.

Customers make purchases based on one of two factors: price and brand. That’s it. Obviously, the fine people at SNOO know their target clients aren’t bargain-hunters, but they also know that they need to do a really good job of convincing their audience why they should buy a baby cot that costs eight times the average price. And they do. They don’t market their product, they market the results.

Allow me to explain: if I were only shopping for a four-sided mini-crib that could sleep my baby, I’d be looking for the cheapest, safe option. And if the SNOO simply said, “We have a really great sleeping vessel for your kid,” that wouldn’t really move my needle toward a four-figure purchase.

Instead, SNOO knows its buyers’ real pain points: fear of infant suffocation and sleep deprivation. It does a really good job of educating its customer on how it keeps babies safe, secure and face-up in the crib, and how its smart technology settles babies back to sleep so that parents don’t have to jump out of bed in the middle of the night (as much). It’s also excellent for putting your baby to sleep while you’re trying to write a blog post.

Now, as a consumer, I’m much more interested. See?

PLEASE hear me when I say that marketing is not lying or embellishing. This product actually does what it promises (and you should do what you promise, too). Marketing is education, education is marketing, and it really, really works.

So what does this mean for your yoga studio? If I’m a customer shopping for ‘yoga classes,’ or ‘yoga for every body’ ::cringes:: I’m going to pick the cheapest, safe option, right? I’m going to the big-box gym. But if I’m shopping for pain management, anxiety relief, weight loss (or a solution to any number of expensive problems our clients face) a low price is no longer my #1 priority. I’m going to the person who does the best job of convincing me that they can help me, and I’m willing to pay.

When you think about your business’ messaging, you HAVE to educate your customer on how you’re going to solve their expensive problems. The what (yoga classes) doesn’t matter nearly as much as the result they’re going to get by working with you. So paint the picture of what it looks like on the other side of pain and market your results, not your product.

They position themselves as experts.

The SNOO was invented by a pediatrician named Dr. Harvey Karp. Harvey Karp has absolutely no qualms about telling you why he’s THE guy to be selling you a $1,600 cot. Without boring you with the details, his bio basically says he’s the world’s most trusted baby doctor, he’s got a billion years of experience and he’s devoted his life to keeping babies safe in their sleep. He’s an expert and he will tell you that without reservation.

I think yoga teachers have this thing about egos that really trips them up when it comes to selling themselves. They don’t want to appear too boastful, so they shrink into the corner when it comes to marketing. The problem with that, of course, is that no one wants to buy from someone who’s kind of okay at what they do.

If I sat here as a business consultant and said, “I might be able to help you. I might not. I’m sort of okay. You’ll make a little money,” you probably wouldn’t be dying to do business with me, right? But when I paint the picture of my clients’ really great results (see above) my message lands much better.

The same goes for your studio. Showcase your clients’ results. Talk about your years of experience and training. Strut your stuff! Have integrity and if you can’t help someone, be honest and tell them IRL (in real life). You can be humble in your delivery, but not in your marketing. Customers want to buy from people who know what they’re doing. Full stop.

They’ve got timely outreach down to a science.

When you set up your SNOO, you download an app that asks you a few simple questions like your baby’s name and their birthday. Innocent enough, right? Wrong! That birthday entry is a marketer’s dream. It tells the people at SNOO (okay, it tells their automation software) exactly what messaging to send to its customers at exactly what time. They send out a mass newsletter that I’m sure does fine, but not as well as the email alert I get that says, “Your baby weighs 15 pounds now, time to buy a size up swaddle!” See the difference?

Your marketing should work like that too. Mass emails are all well and good, but nowhere near as effective as targeted outreach at the right time. Do you have a member who’s slipping off? A trial that’s about to expire? A student who’s come to class 2679236 times and should be doing teacher training? Hit them with the right message at the right time and watch your sales soar.

Now speaking of that teacher training…

They are masters of the upsell.

From what I’ve read about SNOO (which is a lot more than I’d care to admit) they’re a really great company that donates lots of beds to hospitals, they have a rental option that makes the product more affordable and they’re sincerely on a mission to reduce infant sleep death, so I have nothing bad to say about them but the truth is this: their customer base is relatively small.

I looked it up: they did $100 million in sales last year, while baby cribs and cots is a $1.48 billion dollar industry - so they have a tiny sliver of that pie. They know that they’re targeting a niche buyer, and they know that when their market is relatively small, they have to optimize each client’s value. So: enter the upsell.

You can’t just buy the bassinet. You also need the specialty swaddles, the perfectly-sized fitted sheets, the little pegs that lift two of the legs up to sleep your baby on an incline while they’re congested, the transition swaddles for when baby’s ready to move to the crib and a bunch of other stuff. They know when you need to buy it, and they wave it right in your face so that you do.

You can do this too! Group classes should be the bread and butter of your business, but once you’ve got someone super invested in your brand, show them what else is possible! Teacher training? Retreats? Workshops? Products? Massages? There are so many ways to add revenue streams to your business and turn your raving fans into lifetime buyers.

They leverage content marketing really well.

My favorite brands are the ones that are not constantly asking me to buy their stuff. When I’m on a business’ Instagram page or website, I know they’re trying to sell me something; they don’t have to tell me over and over. I stay in a business’ world when I’m learning something or I’m entertained. SNOO has a really awesome blog that I’ve read quite a bit of, and I find value in spending time in their online space even when I don’t have my credit card out.

You should be finding ways to add value to your prospects’ lives, even if they’re not immediately ready to buy from you. Use your expertise to offer content that builds the ‘Know, Like & Trust’ factor with your audience and gives them a glimpse into what it might be like to work with you. They should know a bit about your beliefs and approach before they even walk through your door! That’s good marketing. I always cringe when I look at a studio’s social media page and 99% of the posts are Canva graphics asking for a sale: Come to this workshop! Take that class! Buy this water bottle! It gets so stale. Your audience isn’t stupid; they know you have a for-profit business. Keep them engaging with your content that they actually find valuable so that when they are ready to buy, you’re right at top-of-mind.

Time to put my baby to bed in his $1,600 bassinet.

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