The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing: GREED

Are you really customer centric, or is it just lip service?  Perhaps you've been tempted into the Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing.  Today, here's a big one (and it's very, very common)...

GREED: Squeezing customers out of every cent

Customers are just lining up to give you money.  They love your product or service.  They rave about you online.  You're the very best, and your customers just can't get enough of you.

I HAS ALL THE MONEYS!

So, now's the time to try to monetize that love in order to increase your sales margin - after all, they love you, they won't mind paying more!

So, maybe you raise your prices a little bit. And that works. So let's look for more ways to nudge that margin up a little higher...

Maybe you issue "basic" versions of your product or service, but to get the newest, coolest best, most fun stuff, you have to purchase additional items, or content, or products.

Maybe you make it difficult to redeem offers, or change the value of points in your loyalty program to make it harder for customers to redeem rewards.  Think airline rewards programs where they blackout the most popular travel dates, make sure that the number of points needed to redeem for popular routs is so huge, only the very best customers can "afford them.  Or again, let's pick on the airlines and think about how much they charge for wifi service.

Think about hotels where you are charged for every single thing, including a bottle of water that costs less than a dollar retail.

Think about coupons that are only good on a very small select product line - one that isn't very popular - or they're only redeemable by jumping through a lot of hoops.

Think about paying for video games that, in order to get the very best equipment, you must buy it (and these are not free games to begin with, mind you)...

Think about airlines charging a couple of dollars for a snack that would cost less than fifty cents retail.

You don't think that customers will ever get tired of being squeezed for all they have, do you? Everybody loves to be met with a hand out for their cash every time they interact with a company - right?  Especially if you're a top brand!

Come on, there's no way they'll go to a competitor that doesn't charge them for every enhancement to the basic product.  They wouldn't possibly be interested in a loyalty program that actually rewards them for being loyal customers, would they?  They wouldn't be drawn to change to a new company by coupons that are easily redeemed for stuff they really want?

Surely not.

For more deadly sins, check out LUST and GLUTTONY.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing: GLUTTONY

We love to talk about the customer, don't we?  But ARE we really customer centric?  I don't think we are, because we get tempted into committing the Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing.  Today, let's talk about...

GLUTTONY: For new customers

Delicious, delicious new customers.

It's easy to believe that our product or service appeals to everyone.

I once was told by someone that we should mail everyone in our database because even though many segments had never demonstrated any interest in a particular set of products, they might want it someday.

What we do or sell is just so incredibly awesome, it'll make everybody's life better, right?  Only a crazy person would refuse to buy our stuff at such incredible prices.

So we go after those new customers, chasing them down, finding the new markets, growing the new customer base.  All we have to do is get customers to buy our product or service once, and they are our customer for life.

Heck, many, if not most, marketers are measured and directly rewarded on this key metric - growth of new customer bases - and they spend a majority of their time chasing after them as a result.  So we go further afield to grow our customer base, sometimes at diminishing returns (but that's okay - new customers are new customers and growth is growth, and that's all that matters).

We get so wrapped up in this - new customer bonuses and rewards and the like - that we end up completely ignoring them once they are captured as existing customers.

Our rewards, our focus, and our metrics all say that new customer acquisition is the single most important part of marketing.

Hey, if existing customers are locked out of the best deals and offers only available to new customers... what's the harm?  They love us, they would never switch or abandon us, because we're just so awesome.  And if they do, well, we'll just replace them with new customers!  Problem solved!

Well... let's ask the cable and dish companies about that, shall we? Goodbye Cable TV

Great job, guys - continuously raising rates for existing customers, only offering deals for newbies, and poor customer service allowed services like Roku, Apple TV and others allow folks to just quit your business outright.

I know someone well who works for a small company with this attitude - once they close the deal with a new customer, the idea of treating customers well, offering rewards, and the like, are completely out the window.  The only real rewards in that organization is to close the deal with new customers.

They don't even measure the loss of existing customers (and they're bleeding in that regard) because nobody in the organization, especially not sales or marketing, is rewarded for keeping or growing existing customer business.  Do you think this company is going to be around long, or grow big?

So look at your own organization. Do you reserve your very best deals ONLY for new customers?  Is that an industry standard, like the cell phone industry?  Are you teaching your customers that loyalty means nothing because you'll always get a better deal as a newbie somewhere else?

Gluttony for new business will KILL your business in the long run.  The solution, of course, is moderation - you need new business, and you need to retain and grow existing business.  Do both, and make sure both are measured in your metrics and sales/marketers are rewarded for both.

For more deadly sins, see LUST.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing: LUST

I've read and heard a lot of folks in the marketing game discussing the fact - and it is a FACT - that the customer should always be the primary focus of your marketing efforts.

Insert Customer Here.

This is always a hot topic - on blogs, in magazines, at conferences, with consultants and speakers and what have you.  There is little disagreement on this point - customers rule.

If we all agree on this, why are we constantly talking about it?

Perhaps we are finding it so hard to make this fact actually be the truth in what we do on a daily basis.  We are certainly are talking the talk, but the walk... not so much.

It just seems so hard to keep the customer front and center in practice! How do we allow ourselves to become distracted from our customers and what they need from us?  What temptations are thrown our way to cause us to make other things top priority?

Temptation leads to sin.

Deadly sins.

That's what this series is about.   Today, let's start with a big one.

LUST for technology

Many, if not most marketers are early-adopting and high tech.  We got smart phones early, we were playing with QR Codes and NFC and mobile technology of all kinds while most people still thought the Motorola Razr was a pretty neat phone (and for the record - it was pretty neat, and I still miss mine).  We're always looking for, and are excited by, the next big thing.

Oooooh, new marketing technology....

Additionally, new technology can provide significant cost savings and it's just very, very hard to say "no". The prime example of this is the adoption of social media over the last decade.

Are you sure - are you certain - that your ideal customer base is using, or will be using in the near future, these cool new tools?

Look at the epic fail of QR code adoption in the United States. For a while, they held a lot of promise (I was a huge fan), but the user experience, ultimately, killed it.  Most consumers didn't know what they were, why they should know, and what to do when they ran across them.  They're still out there and used by folks in some limited applications, but they'll never be the big thing we was hoping they'd be back in 2009.

Let's take social media - in 2014, it's universally believed that we must use social media for business, especially for customer service applications, right?  I'd bet that the majority of small businesses within a ten mile radius of me in Dallas-Fort Worth (not known as a technological backwater) aren't on Twitter and will not be in 2014.

Twitter will be eight years old this year, and yet, the dry cleaners and the restaurants and the accountants and the small mom-and-pop retail shops and the lawyers and the doctors and dentists and so on do not tweet, see no value to it, and have no interest in it at all, and they don't think their customers need them to join Twitter to be engaged and connected.

If you serve these sorts of businesses, then you need more tactics than trying to use Twitter as a tool to engage with them.

Chasing new technology while abandoning perfectly good and useful tactics - tactics that customers are actually using and are happy using - is probably not the smartest strategy. Your marketing toolbox should expand, versus making it smaller dropping channels than customers like.

Slow it down while customers catch up with you.

Don't commit the sin of Lust for technology, because you may miss out on connecting with customers where they are and how they need to be, versus the way you want them to be.

Got any stories when the shiny new object distracted you from serving customers?  I'd love to know!

DOTC: Meetup 101

I've mentioned Meetup before, when talking about Leads Referral Marketing Groups, but I'd like to discuss it a little more in-depth.  Meetup is a social network, like Facebook, but aimed helping people of similar interests find each other and meet in real life.

I have no clever caption for this image.
CURSES, FOILED!

First thing you should know: to join as a user, Meetup is completely free.  However, if you want to start your own group, you must pay organizer dues.  Some meetups will thus charge a fee to cover these dues, or may impose other fees upon attendance, so make sure you understand all of that before you show up!

By the way, I use Meetup for my personal hobbies and interests as well - and I do not mix the two on one profile, much as I have a business Twitter account and a personal Twitter account.

Next, once you join, do not neglect to make your profile professional, including a good picture.  I consider my Meetup profile no different than my LinkedIn profile, so I gave a lot of thought to my bio.  It's a distilled version of my generic "elevator speech" or "30 second pitch".

Depending on how you want to target groups, the next thing you will do is choose a few interests.  For leads referral groups, try "referral marketing" "referrals" "business networking" and similar topics.  If you are industry specific or highly targeted, try including keywords associated to those industries.

You can choose to add Facebook to your account, but I only did that with my personal account, not my business account.

Okay, once your profile is all set up, then start searching for groups, using some of the keywords I suggested above.  Once you find one you like, you probably will have to join it to see meeting details.  Most groups ask a few questions before you are allowed to join, and be sure to fill them out completely and well - think of this as marketing like any other, like you are pitching to a brand-new potential customer you just met.

You may be approved instantly, or it may take a bit for the meeting organizer to approve you.  Either way, eventually, they should add you to the group.

I advise starting with one or two groups at most, then expanding from there, as your  marketing plan, time and budget allows.  Be sure to RSVP to a Meetup's meeting (with Yes/No/Maybe and any guests you're bringing with you, if applicable).  That will help the group out a lot, as most people on Meetup attend meetups where lots of others are going vs. ones that seem like few are going.

Meetup can add group meetings to your calendar if you wish (I find that feature extremely valuable!).  Learn how here.

So get out there and start meeting up on Meetup - it's a great way to get in front of lots of people who may need your product or service, and meet people you can refer to your clientele!

Got a great tip about Meetup? Let me know!