I’m not talking about your company being acquired. I’m talking about looking at the language you use in your marketing campaigns. You have customer “acquisition” campaigns, email “blasts”, and other military conquest terminology. But put the shoe on the other foot and see how this looks from the customer’s perspective.
Pretend you’re the customer to see how silly this is.
I was “acquired” through a social media “campaign”. After getting hit by your email “blast”, I was converted.
If you believe in relationship marketing, inbound marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, public relations, or word of mouth, you know that you’re dealing with humans on the other side of your marketing cannon.
Imagine if you were actively dating and told an attractive prospect that you’d like to “convert” her on your first visit. You’re practicing your “call to action” on various women, but find that they get turned off by that. So you resort to increasing the frequency of your pickup lines.
And you heard that 127 characters are the ideal length for your copy at you should say it at precisely 10:35 am on Tuesdays. Then any random female you meet will convert then for sure. It’s just not working and you’re having trouble.
There are so many bars out there and it seems like a new bar opens every minute– Snapcrap, Faceboogers, Instahookup. You buy these special tools (an overpriced copy machine) to print out your flyers since they promise immediate conversion. But that works about as well as that exercise equipment you bought on late-night TV– you still don’t have six-pack abs, and can’t even climb a small hill.
So you hire a dating coach (digital marketing consultant or agency) who has been to these places to “blast” them on your behalf. Now your messages are all over every random telephone phone and on the backs of those free magazines you pick up on the sidewalk, and it becomes nothing but the noise that passers-by barely even glance at (spam).
Further, you’re an expert in X, which is what your company produces. But the agency (an expert in social media and advertising) doesn’t know about X, so they just apply the same broad matchmaking strategy because they don’t have anyone who meets your criteria (goals). They’re hoping that by wading through every match and wasting your time and money on dating (campaigns), you’ll somehow land on the perfect one (targeted audience), and you’ll be perfect together.
Long story short: you won’t. You fear you’ll be forever alone, so in your desperation, you turn to Facebook and look for people who are single, and call them out of the blue to ask for a date (Cold calling). The majority laugh and hang up, though maybe out of the thousands, you’ll find that one person who will say yes.
Analogy aside: It’s all about nurturing your relationships, and never trying to sell. The antithesis to this is cold calling, which you should avoid at all costs. Without clearly defined goals and criteria, you’re wasting time and budget on serving a message to irrelevant people who won’t care and won’t convert.
Always keep the GCT triangle in mind from our 9 triangles framework when working on these campaigns, and when you find your “WHY” and have a strong personal brand, there’s no need to ruthlessly sell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8yQepWnGF0
So, would you want to be “acquired”?
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