Lessons from the Thigh Master: How to Create a Killer Marketing Product
Founder + Partner + CEO
Published Thursday, August 13, 2020
Suzanne Summers said it best, “You just put it between your knees and squeeze.” The perfect product, at a perfect time, with a perfect spokeswoman – it was a killer marketing campaign. The Thigh Master made hundreds of millions. As did the Snuggie, the RonCo Rotisserie, and the ShamWow towel. I can name hundreds of others but none more famous than the Thigh Master.
So how do you take elements of the Thigh Master’s success and use them to sell your own products and services? Here is what the makers of the Thigh Master did, and the lessons we can learn.
Know your product(s) and service(s). I’ve written about this before in the “Eat Your Own Dog Food” blog -- you should know everything about your product. Understand the good, bad, features, benefits, the selling points, and what the competitive advantages are. What is your 30-second elevator pitch? The Thigh Master was so simple anyone could understand it. Marketing drove the message home with their tag line “Put it between your legs and squeeze.” How easy is that?
Who are your customers? You don’t have a product (or a business) until you have customers. You must know who your clients are and then segment them, and after that, segment them again. Eventually, you will have a very specific customer profile. Thigh Master’s customer base were people who exercise. As they segmented their base their ideal customer target group became a woman, who stayed at home, between the age of 30 and 50, who are upper-middle-class, and have 2 or more kids (please don’t be offended this is a product of the 80s). Knowing a true target market allows you to streamline your message and speak directly to those most likely to use and buy your product and service.
How do you sell? You know your products and you know your customers. Now how do you sell it to your customers? Today, there are lots of available selling channels. The Thigh Master chose to sell via infomercials using a famous spokesperson. In the ’80s, the Thigh Master was a huge infomercial success, but today it may have been just as successful through social media ads, TikTok challenges, or using Suzanne Summers as an influencer on TMZ rather than the Home Shopping Network. The makers of the Thigh Master knew their target customer would respond to infomercials, so they bought ad space between the Oprah Winfrey show, before and after Donhaue, and during episodes of Fantasy Island. They made millions of dollars selling what was basically a red spring with blue protective pads. My Mom bought one (which my Dad actually used – no joke) and I’m guessing lots of your parents did as well because their marketing pitch was genius.
So how will you sell your product and service? You may not have the money to afford an infomercial or Suzanne Summers, but there are many ways to reach a customer.
At ScreenBroidery we reach customers through sales reps, email blasts, trade shows, social media posts, this blog, etc. We also put logos on lots of products for tons of different selling purposes. But everything we do is promoting a service to a specific customer using a specific channel -- all using lessons we learned from the Thigh Master.