When No-Boundaries Marketing is a Bad Thing

The Internet has redefined customer relationships, but not always in a good way.

The Internet has broken down many of the barriers between businesses and their customers.

Because of the Internet, it’s much easier to find, reach, and target the people most likely to buy your product – even if you don’t have a huge marketing budget. Because of the Internet, businesses can think creatively about expanding the boundaries of their businesses – opening them up to make them more accessible to customers.

However, as the technical boundaries between businesses and their customers have changed, so have the behavioral boundaries – and not always in a good way.

Perhaps emboldened with more-direct, conversational access to customers, some businesses seem to have forgotten who they are talking to. The result is marketing behavior that throws up new walls between the business and its customers.

Here are three examples:

The Buddy: The Buddy Marketer talks to prospects and customers as if they were his friends from the office or the bar. He calls you by your first name on the first call or contact. He sprinkles his marketing copy with intrusive, self-absorbed patter. He assumes a level of familiarity and informality that he hasn’t earned. He often only has one name, usually something like “Chad” or “Justin” or “Nicki.” The Buddy appears more concerned with being “cool” than solving your problem and earning your trust. I don’t know about you, but even if the product offer is exceptional, I’m hesitant to buy from this marketer because of his cavalier attitude. I figure, if he’s this bad and un-businesslike before he gets my money, he’ll devolve into a total slob after he gets my money.

The Buddy Marketer isn’t strictly an online phenomenon, nor is he damaging only in business-to-business marketing.

Here’s a real-life business-to-consumer marketing example. A financial advisor at a multi-billion-dollar investment firm – someone covering for my regular advisor – called to apprise me that a corporate bond had matured. “Good thing that p___ of s____ matured, eh?” he chortled. Did he forget that his company sold me the p___ of s____ in the first place? But in his attempt to appear cool and to Buddy me, he irrevocably damaged his company’s reputation. (And yes, I moved my investment account.)

And then there’s today’s universal greeting for restaurant patrons: “How are you guys doing today?” For many consumers, a big part of the experience of dining out is being served and being catered to, by someone who knows how to do it – certainly not a Buddy.

The Autocrat: The Autocrat is presumptive. He tells you what to do, with stern words usually punctuated by today’s most-overused punctuation mark, the exclamation point. “Call me at your earliest convenience!” “Get back to me as soon as you get this email!” His emails, phone calls and direct-response letters smack of self-absorption (me, me, me) and disrespect for my time. Why would I ever give this person any of my business? [Added 3/2/2010] Case in point: I received a voicemail today marked "urgent." It was from my Staples "account manager," who was "just checking in."

And then there’s the top technology publisher whose high-powered and deep-lunged telemarketers sign you up for tomorrow’s webinar before you can get a word in edgewise. I am sure that this technique helps them “stuff” the seminar with prospects for the advertisers, but how effective can this be if many prospects have no interest and don’t show up? I made the mistake of giving them my email address – now they are controlling my time. Not good.

The Goofball: The Goofball tries to amuse and defuse by acting like a child. “Oops!” in the header of an email, or as an explanation for a 404 error on a web-site page, isn’t cute – it’s annoying. It undermines my confidence in your company or your brand. Incompetence and errors in business aren’t laughing matters to most customers. A simple “we’re sorry” is more reassuring.

At the root of all three of these problems is lack of empathy for the customer – and a lack of appreciation for what makes a good customer relationship: honesty, integrity and trust.

Great marketers keep the customer in their minds during every interaction and transaction. They define how they want to treat customers, and weave it into the marketing of their products – from advertising and social media, to how employees behave on the phone or in the store.

Creating detailed buyer personas – or even tacking a photo of your best customer to your computer monitor – can be powerful, evocative reminders.

The Internet makes it easier and more inexpensive than ever to understand the changing marketing boundaries that customers appreciate. Customer satisfaction surveys, informal temperature-taking on social media, or just plain talking to customers are all within your reach. Use them.

Up in the Air: Social Media and the Launch of the PiperSport

How social media helped sell a $140K airplane

When Piper Aircraft decided to launch the PiperSport – its entry into the light sport aircraft (LSA) category – the company took a traditional approach. It planned to announce the new plane at the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo 2010 at Sebring, Florida, with demonstrations, a press conference, and press rides. But Piper Marketing Director Jackie Carlon also invested in an integrated social media campaign, commissioning Michael Kolowich and his video production firm DigiNovations. The campaign included a YouTube channel, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter feed.

Michael Kolowich, DigiNovations president and executive producer (and a pilot himself), created and managed the campaign. With only one week to prepare, he assembled and coordinated the efforts of a virtual team of micro-bloggers that included Piper staff (on the ground at the expo) and my company, Janice Brown & Associates (in cyberspace).

Michael, in this article and video, tells exactly how and why the campaign worked.


The campaign reached out to pilots, flying enthusiasts, journalists and bloggers around the world – quickly extending the excitement far beyond Sebring and creating fans all over the world.

And generating demand for the plane. The first plane sold on site, the second day of the show. (The sale was, of course, immediately reported on Facebook and Twitter, with a picture of the lucky buyers.)

The campaign of course started with a phenomenal product. But it was successful because of several strategies:

Authenticity and empathy– the right tone and content dramatized the PiperSport experience for the online audience

Engaging multimedia content, created by informed people (Piper and its fans/followers)

Emphasis on interactive conversation instead of just publication

Tight integration of the three social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and integration with the marketing goals and overall marketing campaign

Careful timing and pacing

Marketers can learn from this case study, even if they aren’t selling a $140K consumer product.

(And yes, you can buy a PiperSport over the Internet, using PayPal. Click here.)

Are You Making These Common Mistakes in PR Management? - Part 3

Three Mistakes That Can Make Your PR Less Effective – and How to Avoid Them

In my last two articles, I talked about two common and costly mistakes that businesses make in managing their public relations: leave the PR firm alone and treat PR as an afterthought.

In this final article in the series, I talk about a third common mistake that businesses make – treating your PR firm like an adversary, not a partner – and how to fix this mistake.

The Mistake

PR firms make money by selling you time and expertise, right? So, their main goal is to sell you as much time and expertise as possible, right? So, you shouldn’t do anything to help them sell you more time and expertise – particularly if you don’t think you need it, right? Wrong.

Good PR firms know their job is to make you wildly successful in meeting your marketing goals. First, they get paid for this. Second, they usually get “paid overtime” with customer loyalty from you and more business from your referrals. So, good PR firms act as your partner and invest themselves in your success – including investing some of their own time in learning your industry and business at the outset.

The Fix

Level with your PR firm. If you have a big need but think you don’t have the budget, present the problem and ask for their advice – you will often be pleasantly surprised. Remember, creativity is the hallmark of good PR people, and this creativity should extend to business and client relationships. PR is a relationship business: good PR people are experts at negotiation, compromise, and reaching consensus such that everyone involved feels good at the end of the process – and that they achieve the desired result.

The best results can’t happen if you treat your PR firm like an adversary.

Here’s a story. I once had client who routinely came to me at the last minute when he needed a news release written. By “last-minute,” I mean 6 PM, when he needed a draft by 10 AM the next morning. Until I figured out the game, I usually ended up staying up until midnight to produce a quality draft, so it could go through our editing/fact-checking/QA process first thing in the morning. My job was to produce something of sufficient quality that it would be of interest to journalists and get picked up (this was in the days before the Internet, direct-to-consumer news releases, and SEO). I was usually successful, but at a cost: aside from lost sleep, there was always the chance that the product would not be high-quality.

My detective work eventually identified the problem. The client feared that if he gave me a more reasonable lead time – say, three days – I would “use up” more hours and therefore charge him more dollars. If the client had just leveled with me in the beginning – “we can only spend XX dollars on this news release” – I would have promptly identified a solution that worked for both of us – thereby removing the risk of a poor product. I eventually did this, but look at the time we wasted. (The client stayed with me for many years, so all’s well that ends well.)

If you’re treating your PR firm as an adversary, ask yourself why. Unless it is because you really don’t trust your PR firm – and for legitimate not hypothetical reasons – talk to your PR firm. Working together, you can almost always come to a meeting of the minds – or at least know that you can’t. An adversarial relationship wastes everyone’s time, wastes your money and jeopardizes good results.

If your PR firm doesn’t rise to the occasion, get another firm.

Businesses continue to make three common mistakes when managing their PR firms. They leave their firms alone too much. They think of PR as an afterthought. And they treat their firms as adversaries instead of partners.

All of these problems can be solved, usually with easy fixes – by working with your PR firm and by taking advantage of their creativity, relationship skills and can-do attitudes.