Looking at late night infomercials always makes us wonder who would spend their hard earned cash on something that looks useless to the eye. Infomercials have a way to convince people to pick that phone up and order the product they’re marketing. But at the same time, the ads fail to tell the truth about the very same products, leaving the buyer mostly disappointed.
I’ve been a victim of as seen on TV products and I still wonder why I see these infomercials on TV.
The funny thing is, as hard as it might be to believe, these products have actually been sold millions of times and they’re being sold every single day. At least that much is true for Enhance Product Development, a software development company in Champlin which has been producing these infomercials and products for the past many decades.
“It certainly has a checkered past,” Enhance President and co-founder Trevor Lambert said of infomercials. “But it’s a powerful medium when it works.”
Enhance is not only surviving amidst tough competition from rapidly growing retail and e-commerce industries, but it is also actually expanding its reach.
Enhance’s business philosophy is all about creating products that leave the viewer awestruck. At the same time, they must ensure the product is useful for the potential buyer.
Most of its products are coming from within the company. There is no particularly dedicated research department. All the products are made by the employees who can come up with their own product ideas and pitch to the board of directors. If their products are successful, they are given royalties in return.
This method is also applied to many independent inventors, who are good at inventing things, but really bad at getting their product out there. Enhance helps these folks with mass production, design, patenting, licensing and marketing.
When a product has been made at Enhance, the company first launches it into the general public through the weirdly satisfying infomercials we see on TV. It then lists the product on Amazon hoping that people would leave back positive feedback.
This is risky for a business like Enhance Product Development because a negative review can instantly kill products.
“The ‘Amazon Effect’ can kill a product really fast,” Lambert said. “People want the product to do what it promises to do, and if it doesn’t work, they’ll leave a review and other potential customers will see that right away.”
If a product lives through its lifecycle through infomercials, it is relaunched on the internet through social media marketing. There is a whole new target audience there and Enhance knows how to attract attention to its products and carefully created infomercials and advertisements.
For Enhance, it is all about grabbing the interest of viewers. If it can do that, a product definitely works.
“If you want to get peoples’ attention today, it is important to have a winner. And that’s what we try and create here every day,” Lambert said.
