Not-So-Constant Contact is More Effective

In my previous blog post “Anyone Can Call it Marketing” I talked about how Marketing is a very broad term and many different types of service agencies describe what they do as “marketing” so it can be quite confusing to business owners and clients. adidas femme soldes Today, I want to talk to all the “do it yourself” marketers out there. Truth is, we live in a world where many people believe they can do marketing themselves and thus, save a lot of money. nike air huarache soldes Sounds great, but so does that e-mail you get about receiving millions of dollars from an African Prince. Tools including the awfully-named “Constant Contact,” allow anyone to produce an e-mail newsletter and inflict it upon their target audiences at at time. It’s easy — honestly a little too easy, and really should come with a big warning. ATTENTION: IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE ISN’T REMOTELY INTERESTED IN WHAT YOU ARE SAYING. Just because you can, does not mean that you should. I call this the “Jurassic Park” argument because in the movie of the same name, they have a conversation about it just before the deadly dinos destroy everything and just about everyone. …But it works for marketing too. In 2014, great marketing is fundamentally about trust. If you haven’t built or earned trust, then why would ANYONE believe what you say, buy your products and services and tell others to do the same. asics basket Yet businesses everywhere spend their days blasting out ads, direct mail, brochures and a quiver full of other arrows (yes, including social media) without solving the most fundamental challenge: Do they really trust us? Why should they? What are we doing to earn their trust? So I want to launch a new e-mail service called “Occasional Contact” (patent pending) that tells business owners, sure you can do it yourself and this program makes it very easy…BUT then runs a little wizard that zooms over their preview draft and spits back things like: BACK OFF — Be considerate of your target’s privacy and aware of your own neediness and desire to communicate/sell. ugg australia If this is your 3rd e-newsletter this month, please close the program immediately. EASY, TIGER — Does your content provide any sort of value to your target audience or are you selling like a crazed Girl Scout outside of a medical marijuana clinic? REALLY? — Are you repeating stories because you are lazy or do you feel the audience was somehow wrong in ignoring them the first time around? From what I’m seeing, the world is ready for organizations who know how to pick the right window and deliver real value with their communications. Or maybe sending out communications in bulk should require some kind of license to make sure the power isn’t abused.