Is annoying people a good strategy?
Traditional marketers and communicators are obsessed with achieving their objectives. Web marketers and communicators are obsessed with helping customers achieve their objectives.
“Brand advertising, the kind you’re used to seeing on TV and in print, isn’t nearly as big on the Internet as the search ads dominated by Google,” writes Peter Kafka for the Wall Street Journal in January 2010. “But that’s got to change, as marketers realize that traditional advertising works on the Web, too.”
“The above is an article of faith among a certain kind of Web publisher,” Kafka continues. “And some of them are even paying for studies to prove that display ads–basically all the ads you see that aren’t part of search results–really do work on the Web. Except when they don’t.”
Kafka goes on to cite a study carried out for Yahoo that found that brand ads have some impact on those over 40. For those under 40 the impact of these ads is nearly zero; no impact.
What has happened to branding? How has such an important word been hijacked by such a narrow interest group? Whenever I hear branding being talked about these days I know I’m about to enter fairyland. Otherwise sensible people start talking gibberish and lose all track of reality.
Branding has become all about organizational narcissism, vanity, ego and self-delusion. It’s all about what the organization wants (needy child that it is), where the organization wants to go, what excites the organization (or certain senior managers in it), what the organization wants you to do. Branding doesn’t care about you, the customer. It sees you as a target, an entity it must convince to do what it wants.
A number of years ago, I remember buying books from Amazon. After I added a book to the basket I was brought to a page that had a huge ad for jewelry. I was taken aback. What does this have to do with buying a book, I thought? Amazon was ‘excited’ to tell me that they had just launched a new jewelry store. I wasn’t excited. After a while I noticed that these disruptive branding ads that were unrelated to the task I was seeking to complete had disappeared.
What I learned much later was that these branding ads had not just annoyed Amazon’s customers; they had negatively impacted sales and overall customer satisfaction and loyalty. Amazon had listened and removed the disruption.
When it comes to marketing and communication we need to measure both satisfaction and dissatisfaction, both positive and negative action. Sure, if you put a big ad for jewelry in front of 100 people you’ll get 2 to click on it. And if you make it really annoying and intrusive, you might even get 5 to click. But what about the 95 that didn’t click? To get those 5 clicks how annoyed did you make the 95?
Amazon has a great brand and tremendous customer satisfaction because it cares about the 95. It listens, measures, responds. I’m loyal to Amazon because I feel it’s an organization that pays attention to my needs.
Traditional marketing is about getting attention. Web marketing is about paying attention.
Are Web Ads Only for Oldsters? Yahoo’s Disturbing Study
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100112/are-web-ads-only-for-oldsters-yahoos-disturbing-study/
Freelance Copywriter Richard Pelletier says:
Added on January 18th, 2010 at 3:32 amGerry,
The payoff is the last sentence: Traditional marketing is about getting attention. Web marketing is about paying attention.
Appreciate your relentless focus on this stuff. Gives us grunts out here some ammunition with clients. Thanks!
Richard
Mike Simpson says:
Added on January 18th, 2010 at 12:59 pmSpot on as usual, Gerry.
A big problem is that many people who work in marketing (especially, for self-evident reasons, the senior ones) studied for their marketing qualifications before anyone really knew anything about the web.
The foundation of their way of working is what they were taught, which presented print-specific ideas as universalities because there was only print. For this reason, they treat the web the same way they treat print.
I try to explain to my colleagues that Normal Marketing Rules Do Not Apply On The Web. But that’s what they were taught, that’s what they’ve always done - so that’s what they do.
Many of them just can’t grasp the idea of a user-led medium. They still think in terms of making people do stuff the organisation wants instead of helping people do stuff that people want.
Neil Parker says:
Added on January 21st, 2010 at 7:54 pmYes, Gerry, Amazon is one of the best examples of how to do marketing. But I don’t think it is specific to the web – it is just that online results are magnified many times, so that if someone does it right it is a case of winner takes all.
The web is a really good place to be if one has a really good service or product. Provided that one does the right kind of (direct) marketing to support this, which I suppose is where your type of service comes in.
It seems that most innovation (in service or whatever) comes from businesspeople, the actual practitioners. Sometimes they themselves but, most often, other people, try to articulate exactly what it is that makes their innovations so effective. These other people might land up with phrases such as ‘create trust’ or ‘delight the customer’, and then they spend money advertising these phrases in the hope that customers will believe the words and shop accordingly. But actually, trust doesn’t work like that.
Every time I shop at Amazon I get a small kick, it may be dopamine I don’t know. I like the fact it is easy to cancel. I like their prices, order tracking, one-click purchase and speedy delivery. But I really like not having to pay for delivery. Over time, the dopamine kick doesn’t seem to diminish. If anyone talks to me about Amazon, I am reminded of the feeling. If I had to search for a word to describe it, I would call it ‘trust.’ There isn’t a short-cut. Trust takes time to develop, transaction by transaction.
Whenever we spend money, we exercise discretion in one of two ways, often emphatically. We may favour one vendor and/or we may avoid another. Argos wants to charge for delivery. Or they can only deliver in a couple of weeks because of high demand. Too bad for Argos. Now that Amazon has extended their range beyond books, they are my first port of call for just about anything. So perhaps Argos doesn’t care because I don’t spend much, but Amazon behaves as if they did care, and that’s the difference.
Why I think it is how to do marketing and not just how to do web marketing is because it has always been true, just not so obvious off-line. It was about half a century ago that Drucker said the purpose of business is to create a customer, which means looking after tomorrow’s sales as well as today’s.
Regards
Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:
Added on January 22nd, 2010 at 9:02 amNeil, a really excellent post. I think you summarize very well how trust is built–one transaction at a time. And, of course, you’re right–this is how we should do all marketing, offline and online.
Mike Simpson says:
Added on January 22nd, 2010 at 12:31 pmNeil makes excellent points although it should be pointed out that:
a) Amazon only caught onto the ‘free delivery’ thing after their main competitors like Play.com and Sendit had been offering it for quite some time. Amazon used to offer free delivery only on orders above £25. I suppose this shows that even a market leader can benefit from looking at competitors.
b) The delivery isn’t really free of course. It’s just that the costs of all orders are spread across all the company’s products. We all know this, but we just love that f-word…