Being Buzzworthy

The easiest and most effective way to sell is to get people to talk about you. Create buzz. To create buzz you have to have a unique product or a unique way of doing things. What makes your product or service special?

We started Glacier Homemade Ice Cream & Gelato in Boulder, Colorado, eight years ago. The idea was simple: make the best frozen desserts possible, offer a great selection (up to 80 flavors per store at a time), have a fun environment, and give our customers a great experience. We now have three Boulder stores, a cart on a busy pedestrian mall, two franchised stores outside Boulder, and licensing deals in China and Dubai. We were recently named one of the best ice cream stores in America by forbestraveler.com. We’ve accomplished this through hard work, smart marketing, personable employees, and by creating buzz in the community.

So how do you get your customers talking?

Offer a quality product or service. Be the best at what you do.

Be enthusiastic about what you do and hire employees that believe in your business. Passionate employees and owners create devoted customers.

Help people. Every contact with a person does not have to result in a sale. I’ve subscribed to Kevin Hogan’s weekly email letter for over a year, and have learned immensely from him. I trust Kevin because he never pushed a sale on me. As a result, I recently invested in his online course. At the other end of spectrum, I’ve subscribed to other weekly email letters and cancelled them fairly quickly because they were trying to oversell products without first earning my trust.


Offer an unusual product or way of doing things. Uniqueness can easily create free publicity. Print and online news sources are always looking for stories. Create something that people want to know about. When Glacier Homemade Ice Cream & Gelato signed a licensing deal to open a store in China two years ago, it was featured on the front page of the Boulder Daily Camera. The story was subsequently picked up by four or five major newspapers and numerous online sources. We received tens of thousands of dollars worth of free publicity because of a simple headline: ‘Local ice cream shop to open stores in China.’

Keep your products and services fresh. . Offer a new twist on what you are doing. Add new products, redecorate your store, provide new services. Give your customers a reason to tell their friends about what you do. People want to feel like experts, or be the first ones to try new products. Talkers will always tell other people about great experiences they’ve had.

Become a part of your community. Donate products or services to non-profits or charities when asked. You can’t donate to everybody, so it’s a good idea choose a specific types of charity. Our stores donate to all children’s organizations in Boulder. People are more likely to patronize your business if they know you care about the community. For instance, we’ll sometimes ask organizations to pass out ‘buy one, get one free’ coupons when we donate ice cream to schools or university organizations. There’s no reason not to combine marketing with charity – it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

It will be the entrepreneurs, not the large corporations, who will create the products and services that will get us out of the economic mess were in. Consumers are tired of the same products, the same stores, the same crap you see in every big-city mall and regional shopping center. Create something unique that people really want. The public will go out of its way to support the little guy who’s selling a product that’s different. Create an experience. Make a difference in peoples lives.