Does Your Marketing Strategy Suck?

Yesterday, I g0t an e-mail from a local credit card processing provider that has been trying to convince me to switch from using Square over to them. I made it very clear to them about a month ago that I was happy with Square and I was not looking to switch. This most recent e-mail said: “…. I am really surprised to hear that you are happy with Square, as we have many customers who have issues and complaints about their service.” That line alone made me angry first, and then I rolled my eyes with a fair degree of disgust shortly after. I couldn’t help but wonder – do these people realize how badly they hurt themselves by being so aggressive and in all the wrong ways?

Today, I went to a networking meeting, where a bunch of different professionals introduced themselves, bragged for a few minutes about how good they are at what they do, and started handing out business cards to each other, shamelessly asking for referrals. I am pretty sure that all those cards ended up in a trash can shortly after that meeting was over.

As I left the meeting and walked home, I noticed a giant billboard sign: “Injured in a car accident? Call us for justice and compensation” with a large picture of a greasy looking lawyer, who looked like he belonged in “Carlito’s Way”. As I got home, I had a voicemessage from a dentist on my voicemail reminding me that I am due for teeth cleaning. This is the fourth reminder over the past 2 months. When I got home, I also found a postcard from my dentist reminding me that it’s time to get my teeth cleaned. This is the second postcard this month. This card was burried in my mail along with two home-loan refinancing offers, and a bunch of “pre-approved” credit card applications.

I thought that by now, it has become very clear in the world of commerce that being too pushy when it comes to marketing simply doesn’t work, and actually has the opposite effect – annoying people and making them look the other way. The more sophisticated your target clients are, the more likely you are to turn them off by being too eager to sell or too eager to convince them to buy from you rather than from someone else.

The few excellent doctors, lawyers and accountants that I know personally do not advertise aggressively at all. You are not going to find their name by googling “the best lawyer/doctor/accountant in San Francisco”. Their websites do not have “Come to us” buttons all over them and flash videos about how they are the best in their industry. Instead, they are quite conservative and simple. Those professionals’ exceptional service, attention to their clients, and great results speak for themselves, and these are their main channels of promoting their business.

It is obvious that Roosh is well aware of this. That’s why his ways of promoting his material are so mild and subtle. He has a section on his website dedicated to books, but he doesn’t spend any time or space on his website on praising how great these books are. He lets his readers discuss his books in the forum. He doesn’t post a bunch of (fake) testimonials, and he certainly doesn’t include a link to his books in every blog posting, like so many others would do and actually do.

Roosh hopes and succeeds at attracting people to his material through his thought-provoking and economical writing that everyone has access to for free. If you find what he writes to be interesting, entertaining or both, even if you disgree with half of what he says or find his views to be way too extreme, you will still be very curious to read his books, because you know that at least 20% of what you would find in those books will be the kind of honesty you can’t find anywhere else, and no one else out there will have the balls to put on the paper, even if they thought exactly the same way.

The message to all of us is clear and simple: it’s much better to impress your target audience with your skills and knowledge, and wait for them to come up to you and say “Thank you. Can I have your card?”, rather than shove your business card in their face as soon as you meet them.

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