Why Machine Scent Can be Heaven Sent for Your Business
In an age of information overload, organisations are
increasingly turning to machine scent
to send subconscious messages about their products, brands or venues via
customers’ and potential customers’ sense of smell.
When you think about it, working on this most powerful sense makes perfect
sense. If your hotel smelled badly, for example, would you rush back there? And,
for all of us, many of the smells are linked to potent memories, feelings and
emotions.
After all, the human nose believed to be able to detect up to 350,000 chemicals.
So it’s no wonder The Economist has predicted a boom in the numbers of
businesses taking up scent marketing.
Technology and ways of providing machine scent are evolving all the time. Some
scent technology is even evolving which is ‘smart’ enough to adapt olfactory
messages to individual preferences and moods, or tailored differently for men
and women.
While some air fresheners and the like can work without electricity,
sophisticated technology is being used in scent marketing. Increasingly, this
allows for timings to be adjusted, for fragrances to be switched, and for the
amount of scent released at to be pre-programmed or adjusted by remote control,
or diffused as a micro-mist.
It’s a far cry from early scent systems mean that the same aroma was given off
continuously, and there could be unwelcome ‘floods’ of fragrance.
Although many machine scent systems form an integral part of the air
conditioning, standalone heat-based devices are also available. Work has even
been done on creating websites which will emit particular aromas.
While getting the right technology for your operation is undoubtedly important,
so is good old-fashioned tracking and evaluation of your success with it, so you
know exactly the difference scent marketing is making. Equally, don’t turn your
nose up at this marketing until you’ve seen the results for yourself in your
business.
Evaluating Your Scent Marketing
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Clearly, you need to look at sales in both the scented and unscented
environments and see what effect your fragrance branding has had
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Find out whether your increased sales can be sustained over time, and what
happens if you put your prices up – are your customers prepared to pay more for
the same product in an environment they enjoy?
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See the impact different scents have at different times of day
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A simple electronic counter can measure numbers of people attracted to your
product or venue so you can assess numbers at ‘scented’ and ‘unscented’ times
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Remember, for your scent marketing to work, you also need the right levels of
staff on hand to talk to and assist customers
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Instruct your staff so they realise that machine scent is an important part of
your overall marketing strategy
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One of the biggest potential problems with fragrance branding is not the
equipment itself, but ensuring that employees understand how it works, and can
and will switch aromas and change those parts of the equipment which may need
replacing, such as scent cartridges. Make sure yours are on board.
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