Believe it or not, cardboard cutouts can help your business immensely. A custom cutout can easily evoke an emotion or a belief, and quicker than you know it, you’ll be seeing some real results on your bottom line. For the purpose of this article, we’ll touch on three ways in which cutouts can have an impact on your customers.
Testimonial:
We start with the classic testimonial. You know it well. It’s a solid word-of-mouth form of advertising. And it helps business. Imagine if you could take a photo of a loyal customer who is pretty active in the community. Imagine if he would say something great about your place of business or a specific product you’re trying to push. Imagine if you had a cardboard cutout of the person who you took the photo of. Imagine having that custom cutout in your store with a quote bubble of what he said. So, people might not visit your social media page, but the lifesize cutout is there, “in the flesh” in your place of business…constantly.
Customers come in and know the person of whom you now have a cutout. Those customers might not have thought to buy a particular product, but since you have the cutout with its testimonial, that product begins to fly off the shelf.
Here’s a marketing idea for you. We can make the quote bubble blank for you, which is a pretty common request by our customers. If that person who gave you the testimonial is up for it, change out the message in the quote bubble for any product you want to push at any given time. Even if you give the testimonial person a freebie each time they help promote something, it’s well worth it if you sell a whole bunch. And you can always swap out the cardboard cutout to have others help you with your promotions.
Endorsement:
Stepping it up to the endorsement. If you’re lucky enough to know Tom Brady really well…
Yeah, right. But that would be awesome.
Maybe you know a local celebrity. Perhaps that person is a musician, a television anchor, or even a very well-received politician. With a cardboard cutout of the local celebrity in your store, now it possesses more clout than the testimonial would. In this instance, the celebrity is likely much better known, and their endorsement of you and your business goes a long way.
Even if you and said celeb aren’t best pals who hang out all the time, it doesn’t matter. In the customers’ eyes, you are in good with the famous individual. If that personality is endorsing your product, it must mean your product is good. And people will buy it. You don’t even have to have the quote bubble in this instance.
Affinity:
Now to the third way a cardboard cutout works for the retail atmosphere—affinity. There’s a deeper meaning to the word than its surface-level definition that states there is a natural liking for a person, thing, or idea. Here’s the biological definition of affinity:
The phylogenetic relationship between two organisms or groups of organisms resulting in a resemblance in general plan or structure, or in the essential structural parts.
Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, we have an “attraction” to things that are like we are. And it truly does come into play in the retail world. For example, if a 52-year-old lady goes into a store and sees a cardboard cutout of a 23-year-old young man peddling a product, she won’t be interested. Why? The guy in the cutout is not relatable. He doesn’t look like her; their age difference is 29 years, and he’s of the opposite sex. It just doesn’t work. She would believe the cutout if it was someone in her age bracket that lets her know a product she’s interested in works. So, when planning to insert a custom cutout for promotional purposes, choose wisely. Think about the age, sex, mental makeup, and all that goes into the majority of your regular customers. Strategize things out to get the most bang for your buck.