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Feature Article:
When Marketers are not Welcome
Let’s face it; Marketing is all about being intrusive into people’s lives. The more connected businesses are becoming with their customer, the more this increases a tighter coupling of the relationship to your customer or prospects. This means you should proceed with caution down this path as you market to them. Your target audience is closely watching what you say, how often you say it, and the way you deliver the message. Every product announcement, news flash, sales promotion, hot tip or support suggestion you send out is an intrusion into their lives. Will this be viewed as a good or bad interruption? It is still true that you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and a bad first impression can result in finding yourself on a spam filter or worse.
You have no choice but to actively market your company. Sales are what keep a business afloat and part of the selling process is marketing the message, so strong marketing will keep the company running. Besides if your business offers a product or service of value to your current or prospective customers, then there is nothing “wrong” in promoting what you have. That is of course assuming your basic business value proposition is sound. Part of a good marketing strategy is ensuring that is true.
One new aspect of Internet Marketing over traditional methods is having the ability to track and measure the effectiveness of a marketing message in the greatest detail. If you send out an email broadcast did you design the message to promote recipients’ clicking on specific topics and do you track the results? If a high percentage of the readers are not clicking through to your offer, then maybe it is time to revise the strategy. Measurement is the first step in finding out whether your offerings are relevant to your target market.
In our rush to generate business, we often lose site of the type of interruption we are making for current or future customers. Many times we adopt an attitude of, “so what, if they get one more email message? I’ve got something important to say and they can take a moment to hear it”. But everyone has overworked schedules just like you; so being sensitive to their time constraints will pay off. The over use of spam email is just one example of a good marketing technique gone bad. In time, just like telemarketing, it too will be regulated and fall out of favor as a broad-base messaging platform. On rare occasions even I have benefited from a tele-marketing call to be made aware of a new offering a company is promoting.
So how do you reach new audiences with a disruptive marketing message that will not be viewed as a negative interruption? Creativity that connects with a personal passion remains of course the most powerful tool you can use, but if your offerings lack a natural spark (or are of a commodity status) then focus on user value. Base that as the starting point of your marketing message then look for mediums that have broad channels and reputable appeal. Ads in established email newsletters, or banner sponsorship in related portal sites are ways to reach a broader audience. Yes, even consider using email, but try to associate it with a reputable source. The lack of relevance is what makes spam out of ordinary email.
Most providers of email lists will claim their list is permission based and opt-in, because quite frankly they are not going to admit the names are often used in spam campaigns, which most likely they are. A reputable list vendor has a vested interest in assuring the relevance of your content to their list. Why? Because if the list is truly opt-in and they rent the list to somebody totally irrelevant, the listees will opt-out and the list will greatly diminish in value. Take the time to research where they obtained the names and try to link back to that source as part of your campaign. For example, if the name was from signing up for a sweepstakes offer, link your message to that source by saying you may have not won that new car but here is an offer to make you smile. The closer you can associate to their original interest and willingness to provide contact information, the better success you will have. Again, this does require some extra homework and timely execution before launching an email campaign, but can you afford the loss of good will by consuming a prospect’s time with unnecessary messages? Also, beware of list vendors that just want to rent you large quantities of (allegedly opt-in) email address without checking the relevance of your message.
This returns us to our longer-term mission of advocating better tracking, not for reasons of monitoring prospects in a “big brother” manner, but to help avert wasting their time and your money. A high click-through rate could indicate a high relevance of your message/offer to the visitors’ interest. A high conversion rate of clickers, is an even better indicator. Conversely, if you get a low click-through and/or conversion rate, it is a strong indicator of a mismatch of your message/offer and the demographics of the list.
In one of the highlighted articles in this month’s newsletter a new standard is being promoted that will tag codes to interactive ads to improve targeting. The benefits of this could be very helpful in going beyond marketing demographics that is focused on age, race, sex categories but focus on better indicator of prospect interest. Here you are getting them in the early phase of the buying process to better align with your message.
Track and measure to not only understand your customer needs better, but to market a message that focuses on their particular interest. Remember, your marketing efforts will interrupt and intrude on their day, so plan and strategize to your best capabilities to make this a positive interruption and a good first impression.
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Previous Articles
• Predicting Ranking
• Reacting to the Google Dance
• 4C's of Internet Marketing
• Developing Trust
• Compelling Web Content
• Permission Marketing via Search
• Internet as Research Tool
• Gap between Sales & Marketing
• Budgeting for SEO
• Measuring Marketing ROI
• Building Brand
• Define Internet Marketing
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