THINKing

A Fresh Wind Is Blowing

The business winds are changing direction, but there are some organizations that don’t get it and never will. The news media and big ad agencies are two industries doomed to be swept overboard if they don’t keep a weather eye out. Today, it’s about transparency and a new focus on customer service, doing what’s right for the customer. I’ve found if you do what’s right for the customer, you, too, will ride under full sail.

Let’s review a recent example of what I’m talking about in the marketing arena.  We have a client leaving another agency to come to us for a number of services, including SEO, email marketing and Google Adwords.

Old school companies try to lock clients down by tying them to agency accounts for Google Analytics, Adwords, or email marketing, or  by hooking them into proprietary content management systems and the like.  An agency which manages all of its Adwords or Analytics in a master account is not going to want to give another agency administrative access. Guess what? You can’t transfer Google Analytics accounts and you lose all the historical data. Adwords account can be transferred, but it takes an act of Congress.

When we set up client accounts – although it is less convenient for us – we set them up in the client’s name. That way, if the client ever decides to move on, we can hand over the accounts and wish them well. That’s the new, transparent, customer-oriented way to do business.

Are you old school, or are you harnessing the fresh wind?

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Stupid Marketer Tricks – Addendum

A Russian spam marketer has been murdered. That’s extreme even for a stupid marketer spammer.

Russian Viagra and Penis Enlargement Spammer Murdered – Alex Loonov’s Blog

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Stupid Marketer Tricks #1

Marketers do the dumbest things. And now, thanks to this blog, I can point them out to a lot of people.

Personal story: I belong to FitCare at Birkdale, part of a chain of fitness centers. I’m not linking to them because at this point I don’t want to improve their search engine position. Been a member for more than 5 years. Last year, I added my son to the membership while he was home from college. When he went back, we transferred the membership to my wife. No problem. He is home again and we wanted to add him into a family membership.

You’d think a company would make it easy for you to spend more money with them.

Several phone calls to the center. Leave messages. We’re bounced from one person to the next. We’re told it should be no problem, but we must call back and talk to someone else. The manager, maybe.

Finally, reach the manager, Andy. He says he’ll pull our records and call us back. No call.

We call again. Have to leave a message. We call again. We tell the story about no one calling back. Turns out it’s Andy. He says, “well you’ve reached the manager now.” We tell him, “you were one of the ones who never called us back.” D’oh!

Now, he tells us it will be a problem. More registration fees, higher monthly costs, yada, yada, yada. We tell him this was not the case the first time we did it. Well, now it is, says Andy. Andy? Andy? Hmmm.

Many marketers think that once they have you as a customer, one who has been a customer a long time, that they can treat you anyway they want. Now, the fitness center is one mile from my house and very convenient. But Peak Fitness seems to really want me. Maybe it’s time for a change. Are you listening, Andy? Andy? Andy? Hmmm.

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