…or how to infuriate your customers and followers in one easy lesson.
(NOTE: “Mal-Marketing” – a term of my own creation denoting marketing action so poor that not only does it fail to achieve the objective, it actually has damaging business consequences. “Mis-Marketing” or “Dys-Marketing” might also be used.)
In the world of personal development, one piece of wisdom is that it’s not what happens that really matters but what you do about it.
(OK, if we’re going really deep, we start getting into the area of “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor Frankl…but that’s not what this post is about.)
Put slightly differently…
…”Every cloud has a silver lining”…
…or you can find something of value in almost any situation.
Those thoughts came to mind the other day when I was absolutely FURIOUS about having wasted 4-5 hours of my time…
…and very angry with a marketing expert that I follow who shall remain nameless.
(I thought about being more open about exactly who this involves, but I admire this individual and their work and in general I think they provide a lot of value. In the past, the free training they have provided has been outstanding…which makes this incident somewhat perplexing. So rather than make this a rant against a particular individual, it’s more useful as a case study of what NOT to do.)
Here’s what happened…
Earlier in the week, this expert mailed their list to promote the audio version of a recent book. As an incentive to purchase, they offered complimentary access to a 4-hour webcast, that would cover the latest techniques in content distribution and marketing.
The webcast was billed as having a real value of $197 and, of course, there would be a recording available.
So far, all pretty standard.
Now, I actually already have the book and it’s pretty good. I like this person’s work and it just so happens that right now I am taking a VERY close interest in content marketing and distribution.
So, yup, count me in.
I can’t make the live webcast, but I’ll make time to watch the recording. And at 4 hours I’m thinking I will definitely need to block out time and take some serious notes, based on previous trainings conducted by this individual.
Come the weekend and I get an email with the link to the webcast recording.
First problem. The recording will only be available for 72 hours…
…not the week originally indicated.
No great problem, I’ll schedule this straight away…2 hours immediately and the remainder the following day.
And that’s when the real problems started…
With pen and notepad ready I start to watch.
The opening is a little disjointed but, hey, it’s live, no problem.
We get the intro…
…and almost straight away “news” about an upcoming live seminar.
OK…no problem, I’m a marketer. Perfectly OK to include mentions of products along with the content.
Only problem…
…there’s no content. Seriously.
For 30 minutes or so, there’s what amounts to a long introduction with some banal generalities about the current state of business and marketing.
Then comes a “break”.
I’m dumbfounded. A break after only 30 minutes and virtually no content?
Even worse, during the “break” we get the lame-o technique of playing testimonials from a previous live training.
The kind of sappy testimonials that brought to mind the phrase from the classic movie “The Manchurian Candidate”…
…“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
(Movie buffs will understand the reference…otherwise, if you’re interested you can look it up on Wikipedia.)
We resume…
…and things don’t get much better.
I’ll spare you the tedium and summarise…
…the whole 4 hours was essentially one long, somewhat clumsy, pitch for the upcoming live training.
To be fair, there was some useful content…
…and some important straight talking about social media and other internet marketing.
A couple of important business strategy principles…
…that if you were new to marketing would be very valuable.
However, for anyone with more than a passing understanding of business strategy and applying direct response marketing…
…nothing very new.
There’s value in confirmation of what you already know, for sure…
…BUT that wasn’t what this training was supposed to be about.
In all, the genuine content could have been covered in 30 minutes.
At the end of the 5 hours or so (spread over 2 days) that I spent on this exercise…
…I was both angry…
…but also a little perplexed.
What I just experienced was such an inept piece of marketing, I couldn’t quite believe that the individual concerned would have been so stupid.
But there you go. Nobody is perfect and we all make errors from time to time.
Hey, and who knows? Perhaps a horde of people did sign up for the live training.
However, in my case the result was big disappointment and a certain loss of trust in this individual…
…and from the subdued tone of the comments on the replay page, I suspect I’m not alone.
In a previous post I looked at Dan Kennedy’s book…
…“No B.S. Trust-Based Marketing”.
This case provides a useful example of firstly the benefits of trust (buying the audio book was a pretty easy decision)…
…but also how easy it is to damage trust.
The key lesson here is…
…MAKE SURE YOU DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES!
It doesn’t matter that this webcast “training” was free.
(Let’s leave aside the cost of the audio book, $30 or so.)
What matters is…
1) People were expecting a quality training with a perceived value of $197. They didn’t get it.
2) People invested 4 hours of their time (which is probably the most valuable commodity anyone has)
Closing thoughts…
1) People won’t always tell you when you’ve upset them. I haven’t in this case, largely because having wasted 5 hours of my time I wasn’t going to waste another half hour composing a sensible email message! Writing this post, on the other hand, has value to me.
2) So, when you do get constructive criticism, welcome it!
3) There is a BIG difference between not being worried about offending people who are NOT your target audience and offending customers and prime prospects.
4) Having previously held this individual in high regard, I’m now wondering if they really know as much as I thought they did. They’re also no longer in the position of high trust and will now be viewed a little more skeptically.
5) A couple of other well-known personalities provided enthusiastic endorsements to this individual. They’s just lost a little credibility in my eyes, too.
Trust is a valuable but fragile asset in marketing.
Hard to build and easy to lose.
Keep that in mind…
..and avoid “Mal-Marketing”!