âI don’t care about motivation. I care about credibility.â
Eliot Spitzer
I laugh at the irony some business owners offer, unaware that the difference between their words and messages plays like parody.
Recently, I gave my name and e-mail address to a list-building blogger. A self-proclaimed âsocial media expert,â in fact.
I get itâs the rage these days to distract prospects with pop-up windows, but the one on this site wouldnât allow you to read a sentence as it constantly cycled back â even after you signed up. Iâll admit I was talked into trying one about six months ago on another site. I took it down quickly because it was driving me crazy and didn’t play well with my strategic marketing objectives (keeping visitors on site). I can only imagine how my readers were reacting. Maybe this device converts, but I imagine it chases away more. Still, enough feel theyâre finding success with signage less subtle than neon, so itâs a choice I can understand.
Hereâs the kicker though â the e-mail link delivered for the free report sends you back to the sign up page â and the annoying sign-up pop-up screaming the second the page loads. Mirror sign up boxes stacked atop one another. No report. No way to get out of the loop. I even tried pressing zero for an operator. Didnât work. Perhaps the creators of this system should double as a telecommunicationâs experts creating more voice mail hell.
It looked like a vendor was responsible for setting up the autoresponder, so I tried to contact the site owner to provide an alert about the issue. Sure, all this should have been tested before it went live, but Iâve let the occasional typo or spelling error slip through even after copious proofing, so understand how mortifying it can be to realize something got through that should have been caught.
You guessed it â not a stitch of contact information anywhere on the site. That was the final chuckle and eye-roll that caused me shift away from investing an inordinate amount of time trying to be supportive to the conviction, âI have to write about this.â
Do your words reflect your strategic marketing actions?
Point being, it doesnât matter how good this report is, if by remarkable chance I ever see it. Iâve already formed an opinion about the competency of this provider. If someone promoting themselves as a social technology expert canât get their own web house in order â with the front door locked for entry to boot â the confidence level of the prospect is shattered from the onset. Is it fair? Probably not. Is it dumb? Yep. Paying attention to your prospectâs experience should be a primary priority with any marketing effort.
Of course, the faux pas wouldnât be such a major misstep if this wasnât coming from a âsocial media expert.â The website coupled with the efficacy of autoresponders and other tools set up to streamline and improve the prospectâs experience is paramount when youâre hanging a shingle as a consultant in this vastly competitive industry. Your skills are on stage the moment someone clicks through to your website. Actually, before â with every online interaction you make.
There are a lot of things people do to unwittingly undermine marketing efforts. Itâs sad, actually, because often people focus heavily on outreach when it would be smarter to slow down and make sure the message is consistent. Itâs frustrating when you work tirelessly to build a business yet find few takers. Sometimes, simply taking a close look at how customers see you can turn failure to success. If youâre not doing what youâre saying, people wonât believe you.
Needless to say, Iâm feeling a bit snarky today. For those of you not in the United States â Eliot Spitzer (the opening quote) was an extremely aggressive Attorney General and then Governor of New York State until he got caught with his pants down. Seems he lost a bit of credibility when it was discovered how motivated he was as a regular client of an escort service (this is a kind term for a profession that is not legal in states where he was frolicking).
6 responses to “Smart strategic marketing: do what you say”
That’s probably the worst example I’ve heard, but annoying technical glitches pop up with far more frequency than “accidental” would suggest. Proof, check, doublecheck, test and test again, people!
Thanks for stopping in and commenting, Pamela. I do understand the technical glitch challenge (I’ve dealt with them myself), but in this case there was just too much so would call it, at best, careless. It is a challenge knowing what others are seeing. Personally, I’ve been fortunate to get quick alerts from people if something gets buggy. Of course, they also can find easy ways to contact me :-).
I have some go-to business compatriots who will put my changes through the paces. They are great tire kickers. I love that you refuse to do the popup thing. It may be the in thing right now but it makes me leave a page fast. It feels like some rabid cookie seller popping up in my peephole of my front door. And I WAS a rabid cookie seller. đ
Too funny Arwen. Yep – the minute I experienced the pop-up as a visitor, I said ‘tear it down.’ Of course, mine wasn’t cycling every minute, but it was still annoying. Great idea – and wonderful resource – on the compatriots. Now to go find me some tire kickers :-).