The economy is rough, we get it. And not surprisingly companies big and small are pulling out every trick in their marketing books to try and get you to notice them and possibly even place an order. Some of these tactics are good - for example, the little BBQ shack running a coupon in our local newspaper that has brought in tons of new business for them, including me who had been wanting to try the place but never got around to it. Buy one get one free is a great reason to go. Turns out it's likely the best BBQ joint in Seattle so we're now regulars!
Other marketing tactics though are not quite as good. So I present to you a Top 5 list of bad marketing moves (compiled via a rigorous FaceBook survey of my friends):
1. "Please hold"...Your phone rings so you pick it up only to be greeted with "Please Hold for a very important message." As my friend so aptly said "Um, you called me?"
2. Spelling 101...If you want me to purchase something from your business it would likely help if you spelled my company name correctly. I am a little more leniant about this when it comes to personal names since there seem to be 800 spellings these days for the same name, but a company name should be something that's easy to double-check via the internet. Or how about even checking it against the email address you used to send the message to me cause the company name is spelled correctly there!
3. Overly Familiar...This is when someone cold calls you and leaves a (as my friend wrote): "imagine cheesy, overly suave voice (saying) Liiiiisa, this is Hunter So-and-so. Give me a call! No, you can't fool me into thinking I know you with the overly familiar greeting, and yes, I can use reverse lookup."
4. Time Zone Challenged...(this is especially annoying when your work phone is also your cell phone or you have your work phone forward to your cell) You have my contact information and it blatently shows that I'm on the West Coast. So why do you choose me as your first phonecall of the day when you're on EST? Do you think if you call me early enough I'll be so sleep-logged that I'll ante up my credit card and buy whatever you're selling? Along those same lines, don't act miffed if I don't return your call until 11am EST...that's 8am PST which I think is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to return your call.
5. Soft to Hard...Yes, sounds rude and it is. But I'm talking about the soft sell that turns into a hard - persistent in a never stop calling way - sell. Here's an example; you sign up for a webinar to gain useful information. In doing so you have to give them your contact information. Said webinar is decently useful until it turns into a hard sell of the companies products. But really you can't fault them too much since they did sponsor the webinar. It's when they start calling/emailing you incessently after the webinar to try and sell their products that they cross the line.
Do you have any particular favorites? Let me know!
And so as to not start the weekend on a negative note I learned about this brilliant marketing move this morning from Air New Zealand (http://www.boston.com/travel/blog/2009/05/air_new_zealand.html). It almost makes me wish I were single again...almost...(see yesterday's post for why I wouldn't trade in hubby for a trip to New Zealand. Not to mention that since hubby and I went to New Zealand for our honeymoon it would likely be in a really bad taste to take Air New Zealand up on this offer)
3 comments:
Another interesting Air NZ marketing move, from a few months ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/business/media/18adco.html. Yes, I would almost consider shaving my head for a free flight to New Zealand!
Force me to talk to your assistant, who has no capapcity to be any help to me at all, twice before I'm allowed to talk to you. I've been trying to get an insurance quote and my agent's assistant won't let me talk to her, at all. The assistant clearly can't think her way out of a paper bag and I'm likely going to change insurance carriers just because of this.
I hate the time zone challenged. I forward my work phone to my cell, and always have someone on call, so I keep my phone on all the time. I get calls at all hours.
But today I had a very unique experience. I called one company, went through the voices, pushed the #s, started talking to someone. Who tells me the contract out the service to a company in Australia (and then she proceeds to tell me it's Melbourne something or other, and spells out Melbourne for me). So we conference call to Australia. The customer service rep is really annoyed at the menu choices, and the recording telling us we are #4, #3, #2, #1 in the queue. We finally get a hold of someone who tells me, I need to talk to the other company. After the two companies going back and forth for 5 minutes about who's responsibility it was, I said "when you guys figure out who can help me, please call me, until then I'm not paying the bill" and hung up. With in 2 minutes I got a call and the problem was solved.
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