Seth Godin has been one of the most influential authors in my career. When I started working in an ad agency in the early 2000s, I came across Permission Marketing and it completely changed my opinion of what a marketer could be. I re-read it just a couple of years ago and was amazed at how relevant it still was.

For people who want to learn how to become more valuable in the modern workforce, I regularly recommend Linchpin. But perhaps Godin’s most famous book is Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. The message of Purple Cow is that the only way to win in business is to become remarkable. But how do you make a purple cow? That’s what the short book, Free Prize Inside! is about.

According to Seth Godin, he had to write this follow-up because business was all wrong in how they were going about their search for a purple cow. They were seeking the big. Big innovations. Big marketing campaigns. But a purple cow is much more likely to be a small, soft innovation that customers love – a Free Prize inside their offering. Writes Godin, “Most free prizes have two essential elements in common. First, they are the thing about your service, your product or your organization that’s worth remarking on. Something worth seeking out and buying…Second, most free prizes are not about what the person needs. Instead, they satisfy our wants. They are fashionable or fun or surprising or delightful or sad. They rarely deliver more of what we were buying in the first place.”

As I was reading this, it became obvious that one of the most obvious free prizes is a great customer experience. It’s not more of the product or service. It’s something unexpected during the delivery of the product or service. Something that’s worth remarking on. And late in the book, Godin gives a fitting example. He tells the story of his interaction with Jose who worked in a taco shop in the Denver airport. What was remarkable about this interaction? Jose chatted with Godin for an extra minute while he ordered, got him a special condiment from the back. Later, he asked Godin how his meal was. In other words, Godin had a great experience with Jose. And as he points out, the cost of that experience was zero, but the value to Godin was “enormous.”

Your customer experience can be a free prize for your guests. It can cost you nothing while delivering enormous value.

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