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Don't give it for FREE, give it for dirt Cheap to go Viral

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Instead of giving something for free, give it for dirt cheap

It’s a Vitality Hack

Broadway producer Ken Davenport made a “tiny” $100,000 mistake while pricing tickets for his new play.

He accidentally typed $16.95 instead of $169.50 in ticketing software, forgetting a zero

The mispriced tickets went on sale, and it took over four hours to find and fix the mistake. Hundreds of tickets sold at a discount of $150.

As soon as people got to know about this mistake, they not only bought the ticket but shared it on social media as well

“We will, of course, honor any tickets purchased at the lower price,” he announced.

Turns out, this was not a mistake. It was a clever tactic

Ken remembered an incident

He read a story about American Airlines accidentally selling £6,118 tickets for less than £100 — and it got a ton of publicity

“What if I do this ‘mistake’ on purpose?”

So he did.

Instead of giving away free tickets to promote the play, Ken sold them for $17 each and got loads of attention.

This same tactic will not likely work again for them

Some time ago, Google did the same to promote Google Home Mini in India a few years ago

They gave discount coupons in exchange for playing a simple game, when you used it on Flipkart, you’d get Google Mini at 80% discount for just 500.

Result,

I played the game, bought two of them for myself, and created a YouTube video about the offer, which was watched by over 300,000 people.

FREE Publicity!

It spread like wildfire and the coupons went out of stock within a few hours

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Mostly Growth Hacks
Mostly Growth Hacks

Published in Mostly Growth Hacks

Sharing Product & Marketing Growth Hacks to 10x your Business

Piyush Patel
Piyush Patel

Written by Piyush Patel

I share Product Growth & Marketing Hacks | Entrepreneur | Ex - PM LimeChat(YC’21) | IIT Kanpur'21

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