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Let customers smell more, and you’ll sell more

By Becky McCray

Meat smoker labeled "Sweet Lucille."

Can’t you just smell the barbecue? Photo by Becky McCray.

When was the last time you had barbecue? Can you remember the smoky smell of roasting meat wafting out of the smoker? It’s delightful, let me tell you.

Which is why it’s so smart of Shady Oak Barbecue and Grill in Fort Worth, Texas, to channel all the customers so they have to walk right past the meat smokers on their way in the door.

Because if you get people to engage their senses, including smell, they are 4 times more likely to buy.

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
  • Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
  • In an economic crisis, spend your brainpower before your dollars - November 25, 2020
  • Video: How to fill empty car dealership buildings for the holidays - November 6, 2020
  • How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
  • The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
  • Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
  • Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
  • Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
  • Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate? - June 9, 2020
  • Economic self defense for small towns  - June 7, 2020

October 7, 2013 Filed Under: entrepreneurship, marketing

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Comments

  1. Sam Hamilton says

    October 7, 2013 at 3:17 am

    Ah that is a classic supermarket trick, pump the smells coming out of the bakery to the front door and get people more hungry as they shop

    • Becky McCray says

      October 7, 2013 at 9:12 am

      ooooooo! Great example, Sam! Now I’m thinking of tying scent to my liquor displays. Maybe a pumpkin pie scented candle with the display of Thanksgiving wines. Or a minty smell around the peppermint schnapps.

  2. Ivan Widjaya says

    October 27, 2013 at 10:42 pm

    Engaging the senses is one way to get a customer to buy. Once you get them hooked, they will buy out of their own free will. You don’t even have to encourage them.

    • Small Biz Survival says

      October 28, 2013 at 11:49 am

      Ivan, you might still have to encourage them, but engaging their senses surely helps!

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