Mushroom Marketing Coffee Buzz from Four Sigmatic | #FFLTV Ep 12 Case Study

So for today’s case study I thought it would be fun if we look at a brand that I personally buy from. So this isn’t one of our tribe members.

We usually reserve this time to look at one of our tribe members businesses.

But I thought it would be fun to go outside and look at a case study that I follow, because I think there are some nuggets that will help both our students and those of you who watch this show, just because you want to get inspiration for businesses that you might start.

So today we’re looking at Four Sigmatic.

Four Sigmatic sells powdered drinks, like powdered coffee, powdered hot chocolate right here. And most of them have some sort of a mushroom blend of them. So the hot chocolate is hot cocoa with reishi mushroom.

So mushrooms either have cognitive enhancer abilities or some of them are considered to be immune boosters. I don’t know if any of that is true, but that’s how they are marketed.

What’s interesting about this company is they do a few things really really well. And by the way, you’ll see me often drinking their products while we’re recording this show.

What they’ve done really well first is they have a very clear differentiating factor. For them it’s the mushroom blend, because it would be one thing for somebody to say, “yeah I drink Four Sigmatic powdered coffee.”

Where’s the differentiating factor there? There isn’t one. But if I say I drink Four Sigmatic coffee because it has a mushroom blend and that gives me a cognitive kick and helps me focus more. Ah, now there’s just a little bit of a differentiating factor.

Now let’s be real, coffee on its own is a cognitive enhancer that will give you a little bit of a bump and help you get more work done. But the fact that there is some sort of a twist tells the brain, this is new, this is different and it can create the impulse purchase.

And it is that impulse purchase for a very specific reason that creates raving fans and repeat customers. As you can see.

So I’m on subscribe and save on Amazon and I’ve bought multiple products just because I use the impulse buy on Amazon and I went and I bought more, because I enjoyed the product. We keep it here at the office, so everybody can have some mushroom coffee if they want.

A differentiating factor doesn’t need to be something that sets the world on fire, it doesn’t need to be a big disrupter business. It can be just enough that piques curiosity enough to try it.

The classic story that I like to tell here is *Miller Light, when they came out with their slogan, “triple hops brewed for a maximum freshness.”

All beer is triple hops brewed.

There’s no differentiating factor there.

The twist though is that you say, “oh it’s triple hops brewed I should give that a shot. I wonder what the flavor of triple hops brewed beer is.”

Spoiler alert, you’ve already had it.

But if you can call out some piece of your product that is slightly different or that no one is talking about to create that impulse purchase. That gives you a product and a business that is different among all of your competitors.

And that’s what so many physical product sellers are missing. They’re missing that piece that makes them different. And that differentiation is what creates the fans that will set you apart for everything that you do moving forward.

The second thing that this brand does really well, is their marketing and the aggressiveness with which they market is spot on. So I discovered Four Sigmatic as a result of them being advertised and discussed on Tim Ferriss’ podcast.

If you haven’t read the article, the Tim Ferriss Effect, go read it as a case study in how influencer marketing can have an impact on any business.

This was an article about how Tim Ferriss affected a line of men’s clothing, called Mizzen and Main. But how one influencer made such an impact in their business that it changed everything.

Four Sigmatic does the same thing of sponsoring podcasts so influencers are talking about their brand. This does a couple of things.

First of all, it aligns a business with a thought leader, so you have an elevated perception in the market place.

And second, it has the exact same effect of doing a blast or a give away, but you do it profitably.

Some people will happily spend $5,000 on giving away product in order to get it out to people or get their rankings on amazon, or to get people to buy for a dollar so that you have them on subscription. And that’s a totally viable strategy.

But I find it so interesting that people are unwilling to spend the same $5,000 to go to an influencer to talk about your brand so they’re sending actual real customers that want your product and will subscribe. So this business has done a really good job of being aggressive with their marketing and spending a lot to be able to drive the collective awareness.

Now I don’t know if they’re profiting on that advertising. But I do know that when you get a customer and they come back, it increases the amount of monthly subscribers, it increases the amount of people talking about it, like I’m talking about it right now, it increases the amount of word of mouth, it increases the amount of other products that they come back and purchase.

So if you look at it from the life cycle of a customer and you’re willing to spend all the upfront profit that you would get on advertising, that is when you will have a break through brand. That one little clear differentiator plus aggressive marketing is what has made Four Sigmatic a multimillion-dollar business selling powdered coffee.

I have no idea what their costs are. I don’t know what Four Sigmatic means. It’s not like their profit margins are huge. This is like a $16 product. And it’s not like the name is just so good that it drives people to become customers.

They’ve just executed well and that’s what it takes to build a multimillion-dollar business.

If you’ve been hearing about these kinds of case studies and you’ve seen what we do here on the show and on the Freedom Fast Lane podcast, and you’re wondering how do I actually start one of these businesses, we put new people through a bootcamp that will get you to select, source and sell your first product so that you have that first step towards your million dollar business in process and then we can put you through our strategy to taking that to a million dollar business.

We do that bootcamp with something called the Brand Builder Bootcamp. You can go over to freedomfastlane.com/bootcamp to start your path to getting a product like this that you’ll then differentiate and advertise and ultimately be on the path to a million dollar business.