Rather than advise or preach or lecture you about what represents good marketing I thought it would be incredibly more instructional to show you two very different real life examples of amazing marketing.

I came across both examples within the past week (January 2007)

The first example is a bad one and I’m being really kind in saying that.

 

To be more accurate it’s breathtakingly bad. Below in it’s completely unaltered state is an email I received this morning apparently because I went to this guy’s site and didn’t purchase his product. Here’s what he wrote to me in bold below. Bear in mind I have never met him nor even spoken in an email before receiving this. In fact I think all that I was guilty of was signing up to a newsletter and then not buying his offering.

Hello,

Too bad you are the 40% that doesn’t ‘get it’.

You just let scepticism override logic. Tsk tsk. Silly human.

Your application has been DECLINED.

No need to re-apply. You are no longer welcome here.

Good luck in the rat race!

 

 

 

Now leaving aside any question about the marketer’s (and I use the term loosely) morals and attitude and also leaving aside the questionable nature of his product, this still has to go down as one of the dumbest things I have yet seen on the Internet.

 

I can only assume this clown thinks that insulting his potential client will somehow impress me with his, his, um his, marketing nous?

 

If any reader can find any redeeming quality or marketing angle in the message would they please educate me as to this fellows novel approach to customer service, branding and product loyalty building.

He is obviously acutely aware of the fact that it is far more expensive to find a consumer than it is to keep one you’ve already gotten to land at your website.

This mental pygmy may of course be simply venting, even though I believe it was an auto responder, - but for what conceivable purpose or motive?

But then again I have never understood senseless vandalism or really poorly constructed graffiti either, so perhaps I am the one out of step here.

 

But try as I might I just can’t plug into the marketing skill of this clearly gifted individual.

 

Now as promised I wanted to also share with you the complete opposite of the previous example. This was even more noticeable as it happened in the same week as the above so the contrast was very stark.

 

I was surfing around looking for a really easy to use reciprocal linking script. I wanted something that wasn’t a pain to install and one that looked good and didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

 

I had anticipated this would be a 5-minute search in google and that included my coffee break. Anyway 3 hours later I came upon this site called My Link Helper.

 

I couldn’t believe how great the script appeared as I played with building a directory onsite after I signed up for the free service.

 

It was exactly what I had been looking for to help me easily build my niche real estate directory. I hadn’t been able to find something that was really user friendly and I had plans to make a really authoritative real estate directory

 

Well just as I was thinking it was all to good to be true my daughter and I attempted to install the supplied code.

(Ok it was just my daughter doing it while I supervised)

 

Sure enough the code was buggy or at least my version of it was.

 

But the owner of the website (Dave) emailed me to help every step of the way to get the code going right.

 

I mean picture this. I was in Australia and I am pretty certain that wherever he was it was some ungodly hour. This was also a free script and here is this guy Dave bending over backwards with supreme customer service. He actually hired a coder and got the tiny bug fixed overnight at his cost – we’re talking a free script here remember.

 

Anyway what do you think he achieved by this approach. Actually I hate to even call it an approach, as I prefer to think of it as common (or maybe uncommon) decency. But what did he achieve?

 

Well in the future if this guy ever pitches me a product I am certainly going to be 100 times more interested. If the product is good and the price is affordable he won’t need to pitch me at all. Now that wasn’t his intention but it’s the reality. He has gained my trust and respect just by a rather small, but sadly unusual and all to uncommon customer service level.

 

You contrast his approach to that of the smart mouthed buffoon earlier and you start to see that effective marketing is about more than just search engine optimisation.

 

One guy has potentially a lifetime customer and in this case even an advocate while the other? – Well you get the picture.

 

Anyone wanting to avoid dealing with the crass individual at the top of the story can email me and I’ll pass on his URL in private. In case you wanted a clue it was a site that sells some form of ad sense garbage but I don’t want to give him any publicity even the bad kind, from within this post.

 

As for Dave over at MyLinkHelper (who I wouldn’t know from a bar of soap) well I suggest you visit his site and form your own opinion. The software is excellent.

 

Just treat your customers the way he does and chances are you will end up rich as well as happy.

Last 5 posts by et191919

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