Dumb Marketing is burning your customers and you are too silly to see it
What is "Dumb Marketing"? Well I bet you see plenty of it every day and I bet your boss has you indulge yourself in it at least once a week.
Using the word Dumb works for me but at times others take it personally so let me give you an overall definition of what I mean when I say dumb:
Dumb is when you care so little about yourself that you care only about yourself, to the exclusion of your greater good.
Dumb Marketing is doing advertising or initiating customer contact just so you can say you have done something.
Example 1 - dirty data and poor left/right co-ordination
A few years ago I purchased a Ltd Ed Yellow Chrysler PT Cruiser (to match my hair and shoes of course). I went onto the local dealership and stood there next to a PT Cruiser (which looks like a rocker hot rod) with my Rockabilly Quiff and TUK zebra print creepers and stood there for about 20 mins. The too-cool-for-school salesman ignored me. I had to go into the reception to ask if they wanted to sell a car that day. I told the sales manager who got dragged out I was there to buy a GT in Red - deposit in pocket. Instead of putting me at his desk, the sales manager stood there and asked me if I was interested in the Ltd Ed? I said no, I was there for the red GT. He asked me if I wanted to speak to the product specialist? Nope, I was down with the red GT. He insisted I talk to the too-cool-for-school salesman (who didn't sell a 300C to the bloke he walked past me to serve). Mr Too-Cool told me Ltd Ed came in Yellow. Hello! What yellow, like the Wrangler? They didn't know but one would be in in a week. They let me leave without a contract but they would call when the yellow one arrived. A week passed and I called them. It turned out they couldn't supply the Yellow Ltd Ed I was now excited about. I got on the phone and found one across town in 5 minutes but no dice, the first dealer wouldn't help so I went across town.
That bit is just mighty stupid salesmanship - to un-sell someone who walks in asking for the exact thing you have in stock and move them to something you don't. Criminal. I had Ole Yella for a year and a half till I saw the writing on the petrol station wall and swapped the car for a micro that doesn't drink like a country singer. All good.
Now it just gets dumb. I told the selling dealer I wouldn't service with them past first service because of where I lived. All cool, they were just happy to have the sale. They kept sending me letters saying I was due for a service. When I sold the car I let them know I was no longer the owner and passed a phone number for the new owner. They keep sending me letters to this day telling me my car is due for a trade and seeing I have been servicing regularly with them then resale value will be great*.
Now what we know is that these people have a computer that keeps track of things and probably sends letters automatically. I bet they are proud of this computer. I bet the sales manager dutifully reports to his boss that he does the right thing sending me regular contact letters so I will stay their customer. I bet the boss then tells the board and shareholders that everything possible is being done for customer retention. Job done, budget spent. All is well. Well it isn't, because they wasted a lot of money on me simply because they were too dumb to join all the dots.
This is classic dumb marketing. Doing something for the sake of it despite how it makes the business look silly and burns customers. This example is pretty harmless but how many people are you making hate you simply because you send a boring or aggressive sales email at them every week even though they didn't ask for it? How many people get turned off you because your web site is 3 years out of date or doesn't talk about what they want from you? How much traffic and sales do you miss because you don't put your web address on your newspaper advert?
*not really because they keep discounting the price of new cars meaning that no one wants to pay more than $4000 less than a discounted base model but that is a whole other form of dumb marketing
Dumb Marketing is moving customers from one place to another for a short term gain.
Example 2 - section budgets and arrogance
I worked for a major bank way back in the good old 1980s. They made scads of cash from banking. Good on em. I was a relieving teller (except we were called CSOs to be modern and PC) who filled in at any branch with sick staff or holiday absences. Almost every branch I went into the manager would start my work stint by telling me how they were sales focused and I was to convince every customer who came in with an account at a different branch of this bank to move their account to his branch. I made the mistake once of asking if this was really a good idea as the computers kept track of everything for the customer and the bank just fine so surely moving the account was just causing aggravation for the customer and wasting bank resources as the move served no real purpose. Didn't try that again I can tell you. I didn't try to move accounts either. It was dumb to move an account from one branch to another solely so a branch manager could try to meet sales targets. Why didn't we do something like stand on the street yelling out "Free Bank Accounts to non XXX customers!!!"? Surely that would have been more productive as we wanted new customers, not to move the existing ones around.
Interestingly many years later this bank started calling me saying, "we see you have a few shells in a pile here, would you like to move them into a high interest account?" I always said, "yes of course what is the rate?" They always replied with something a percent or so below ING where I already had a few shells collecting sand. It took about a year for one bright spark to take a different tack and say, "how about a financial adviser then, seeing you are so interested in growing your shell collection?" Finally someone not so dumb. I started a relationship and the adviser put my pride and joy into a managed fund owned by said bank. Cool.
Then about a year goes by and my bank sent me a heavy letter saying that my everyday account was being phased out but I could swap to one of several new ones - all with higher fees. Of course if I had over a certain figure under management with their bank then I was exempt from fees. Could I pop into my branch to let them know which account I wanted to swap to. I did and guess what? I had to pay fees on the new improved account because the money in the managed fund didn't count as money in the bank. I pointed out that the financial adviser who moved my money was part of the bank, the bank owned the fund manager and the branch even had a sign on the window saying "invest with YYY, proudly part of the XXX bank". I had 3 times the threshold. No. I said why not call my adviser? Nope. Best they could do was give me a complaints department number to call. I did and they were just as speak to the hand about it. They saw the logic and while they agreed everything I said was correct it just didn't work that way. I suggested that their arrogance over $6 a month fee could cost them a lot of profit from my investments if I moved them seeing I was so un-happy with their attitude. I was told "so be it".
I wasn't wrong because in about a month a new letter came out amending the terms of these new accounts to deal with the very issue I presented them. This bank almost lost all the profit they earned from using a lot of investor's money over a piddling fee. This is dumb marketing because they made themselves look silly from not having a unified message. Each section is too busy working against the whole to see real opportunity.
Everyone makes mistakes but to avoid dumb marketing be sure that you take the time to really plan what you say to customers. Having a seasoned third party look at your plans can also more than pay you back too in helping avoid unexpected results. Marketing is like chess. You can make moves easily but if you don't see the whole board you lose your men really quickly till you are short one king.
If you want me to work with your business then please visit BRM Web Consulting
