If a customer leaves negative feedback, files a complaint, gets mad for something, writes a bad review, speaks ill of your product or service, stops paying you, one of two things is true.
Trying to explain they are wrong, and behaving as if 1 or 2 (or both) are not possible is simply a worthless, damaging exercise.
If even Google forgets this, it’s probably a good idea to keep it in mind in our daily marketing practices.
It’s not for us to judge what others do.
There are systems in place for that, and as individuals and human beings, we should not feel entitled to decide if other people’s behaviour is right or wrong.
Today we are given the illusion that we have this right, that it is necessary for us to let everybody know what we think about this or that event.
We have lost the capability to use others’ actions for self-reflection (and betterment), and we just cherry pick facts and happenings that confirm to ourselves and the world we are already better, smarter, braver, fairer.
We have lost the empathy to understand others behave like they do not because they are mean, devious, malicious, but just because they are facing our very same challenges, trying to make sense of a life that does not help them in the effort.
We have lost the courage necessary to look within ourselves first, to sit in front of a mirror and think about who we are and who we are not, the things we like and we want more of, the things we dislike and we want less of, and we drown in a continuous flow of superficial interactions that end up being shouts in the dark.
We have lost, and we are losing every day the sense of perspective, of what is important, of why should I care, or what is my role in all this.
We have lost, but we can take all of this back. It’s a choice we make every day.
Not everyone is interested in what you have to sell. Not all those who are going to enter your shop will end up paying for something. Not all those who click on a banner are manifesting an interest in buying. Not all those who ask a question, or many questions, have their wallets open, waiting for the correct answer.
We all take actions without a reason, or at least without a clear enough reason, and so we should not punish those who stumble upon our pipeline or enter the funnel only to dream a bit bigger (or a bit smaller) for once.
Understanding your customers also means identifying those who are going to buy and those who are not. Too often we believe that the latter have just misunderstood, or have received not good enough service, or were misguided by the wrong button in the wrong banner in the wrong place.
It might be, sure, and yet it’s much more likely that they simply don’t want to buy.
And we should let them go.
Somehow we’ve all bought into the story that marketing is about tactics, hacks, posts, optimisation and measurement.
It’s an interesting story, one that somehow feeds both our need to stay ahead of the curve and our tendency to aimlessly complain when things don’t work.
The genius of Google and Facebook as platforms is that they are impossible to master. Can anybody name a company that has developed long term sustainable advantage from the mastery of Google and Facebook? … They have not become tools, they have become taxes that every one needs to pay.
Scott Galloway, PIVOT podcast ep. 188
It’s an interesting story, yet a story nonetheless.
The reality is very different: it’s made of mistakes in the very same metrics we have become accustomed to measure our marketing success by, it’s made of businesses that make money inflating those metrics with no top or bottom line benefit for the advertisers, it’s made of pointless efforts to optimise the unoptimisable while the platform owner brings the whole thing in a totally different direction.
What’s next for marketing is hopefully a reckoning that it’s not the platform, or the channel, or the single tactic, or the brand new hack that builds a meaningful, long-term connection. What’s next is hopefully a return to the lost fundamentals, and an increased awareness that there’s not a single way to reach that person that matters so much. Always start from them and you will win.
You are at a party.
You have been nervous lately at the idea of coming to this party, so while you drive there you rehearse some situations in your mind. You prepare interesting stories, a couple of funny anecdotes, think about how to invite people to your own party next week, and mentally remind faces and names of the people you’ve heard are looking forward to meeting you.
As this happens in your mind, confidence builds and you enter the main room with your chin up high. You walk to the bar, and a guy standing there politely asks: “How are you?”. “Well, thanks. Actually, the most funny thing happened to me this afternoon..”, and you continue for about ten minutes telling your little story.
The nice guy disengages from you to rejoin his friends, and you notice the host a few steps away from you. You approach her and the group she is talking to, and you overhear her sharing that she’d had a problem with her car, and she’d had to walk back home for 10 kilometres, leaving the car on the side of the road. Fortunately, you know everything about cars, so what better chance? “As you describe it, it sounds like a problem with the carburator. I have a list of three things I do weekly to avoid problems with the carburator. First, …”, and you continue with your advises for a perfect carburator maintenance routine for the next five minutes. As the group slowly disperses.
Just after you’ve put something in your stomach (the food is not great, but at least you got to share with some bystanders the story of how you have overcome the challenges of combining work and study, and managed to graduate with distinction), you spot one of the people that you’ve heard wants to meet you. You rush to her with steady steps, and after a quick intro, you invite her to join the party you are giving at your place a week from now. “It’s to celebrate my recent promotion”, you explain, “I am inviting as many people as possible, so that together we can celebrate this unbelievable achievement of mine. Just think I have only been with the company for five months!”.
The party continues, and after the initial confidence, anxiety surfaces once more, as you have the feeling people are trying to avoid you. Why would that be? Did you perhaps choose the wrong stories to tell? Or the wrong words? Is your place too far away from the city center, and people will not join your party for that reason?
You are beaten, and you can’t make sense of what is going on.
Here is how most marketing feels today. Self-centered, obnoxious, bogus and irrelevant. Time for a change?
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