Irritate Your Customers

Last week, a Kansas City Chiefs professional football player killed his girlfriend and then himself, leaving their infant daughter an orphan.  I will not make light of this tragedy, but I will call to account the idiots using the situation for personal gain.  Tonight, driving home from work listening to the local news station, I heard a segment featuring an expert on concussion syndrome.  The hosts asked the expert to opine whether concussion syndrome had played a part in the player's behavior.

The expert expressed doubts that concussions would cause psychotic behavior resulting in an eventual murder - suicide.  Not at all deterred, the hosts continued trying to draw concussion related lessons from the incident.  Soon talking heads will blame concussion syndrome for everything from shingles to syphilis.  They need a few good head slaps themselves.

The most intelligent response to the tragedy came from Doc Walker, a former Redskin from the glory days.  Doc said that all professional football players have dark sides.  You don't become the best of the best at physically attacking 300 lb. behemoths without drawing strength from some dark place.  Expecting someone to practice and play with barely controlled rage and then become a sensitive, caring humanist is unrealistic.

Last week driving home, I turned on the radio in the mood for some classic rock instead of news.  I turned on the radio, hit the satellite button, and waited for some Who, Chicago, or Fleetwood Mac.  Instead I got silence and a subscribe to Sirius radio message on the radio console.  Of course, I was a subscriber or thought I was.  Why did I get the message that I wasn't?

The answer was simple.  My subscription had expired after two years.  But Frank, didn't you get a notice reminding you of the expiration date?  Well yes, I probably did - somewhere in the four e-mail messages a day they send me.  After a month or so as a subscriber, I flagged all Sirius messages as spam.  One of those was probably my renewal reminder.

The best way to hide information is in plain sight.  They hid the renewal message from me in an avalanche of spam just as effectively as if they had never sent it.  Of course, they didn't do this intentionally.  It was just marketing stupidity.  If you bombard your customers with junk messages, you teach them you have nothing important to say.  When you have something truly important to convey, like a service expiration date, they aren't paying attention.  If you irritate your customers enough, they'll avoid the pain you cause by ignoring you.

I subscribed to PC Magazine almost from the time I graduated from college in 1984.  I loved the publication.  It was on top of the PC revolution of the 1980's.  Sometime in the 1990's, they began sending me renewal notices almost from the day I renewed my subscription.  At first, I thought my subscription was about to expire.  Then after reading the notices closely for a couple months, I realized they were just sending me notices every month.  I could always wait until I got closer to the expiration date to renew.

Then one day I realized I hadn't received the magazine for a particular month.  The more I pondered, I realized I hadn't received the magazine for several months.  My subscription had expired, and I hadn't missed the magazine that much.  So I never bothered renewing.  The same thing happened with my INC Magazine subscription.  I recently subscribed to the online edition of INC, but I did that for professional reasons.

The marketing departments of these publications thought that more customer contact is always better contact.  It is not.  Turn the marketing volume up high enough, and your customers will turn you off.  When was the last time, you paid attention to the video ads at a gas station?  Advertising is ubiquitous.  You can't even take a leak at a Major League Baseball game without seeing ads about frequent urination posted over the urinals.  What's next, advertising on the toilet paper?

Web sites trick us into clicking on ads.  Radio and television ads tax our ear drums with piercing volume.  Newspapers intertwine advertising sections with articles, so that we have to tear the sections out to read.  We receive pounds of junk mail every week shouting "Urgent message within" on the envelopes.  Enough is more than enough.  Do you buy from companies that trick you?  Thus, advertising is as dead as Saddam Hussein.  Annoying your customers is bad business.

Effective marketing is no longer about pushing messages at potential customers.  It is about pulling in customers on their terms.  It is opt in marketing.  Offer customers something of real value and they'll listen.  Otherwise, you'll be ignored. 

You can't force someone to like your Facebook page.  You have to attract them with an offer.  Restaurants offer coupons and special events.  You need a value proposition to even get the chance to market to potential customers.  Marketing is now harder and more personal than ever.  Adapt.

Last night RGIII won a basketball game for the Washington Wizards against the defending NBA champion Miami Heat just by attending the game.  Lady Luck is his bitch lover.  After a decade, RGIII has made Redskins games bearable again.  He scores from any field position, running or passing like no other rookie quarterback in NFL history.  The Baltimore Ravens are this week's hapless victims.  Our semi-ignorant Baltimoron neighbors believe they know the secret to stopping him.  Sunday morning, they'll involuntarily attend the doctoral level course in NFL offense.  The final exam is a bitch.

Thanks for reading!  As always, please visit our main S&K web site, www.skcpas.com, for real tax and accounting advice.  Also, like us on Facebook.  We are starting a client of the week post next week.  Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us.