Marketing is Just Like Dating

In constant pursuit of keeping up with the Marketing Jones Family, I came across a book by David Cummings and Adam Blitzer called Think Outside the Inbox. In this short read, the authors compare yesterday’s numbers game marketing style to today’s relationship building marketing approach. This comparison is further simplified to an experience we all can relate to, especially the singletons among us, dating. Below is an excerpt from this book that describes the outdated game of the more leads the merrier:

There are plenty of marketers who pursue the “Dive Bar:” strategy of lead generation. They’ll get phone numbers at any time, from anyone and everyone, and pass on these unqualified leads-on-cocktail-napkins to their sales team in the hopes that one or two might actually become a customer “love connection”. But what really happens is that your salesperson goes on a cold-calling binge and ends up hating himself in the morning, leaving you, his marketing BFF, feeling as though you should have done something differently. Perhaps you should have set him up with a nicer, more respectable lead. The kind you might meet at your grandmother’s church picnic.”

The book goes on with describing the pitfalls of mass email before moving on to how marketing has evolved into building relationships through targeted interaction and communications. The author’s associate today’s marketing “dating” experience to creating a match.com profile. In this forum a marketing agent would be looking for client “dates” that suit the “ideal catch profile” and selling to those matches, based on what the company has to offer them with a palatable, pleasing and personal touch.

As a single female, I am often asked what I am looking for in a mate. My most common reply, “A man who adores women, but not so much so that he feels compelled to collect the whole set at the same time.” There is no larger turn off that being approached by someone pretending to be genuinely interested in you, when you have watched them approach several others in the same attempt. No one wants to be just another number. Consumers are people. They are savvy enough to know when you are treating them like just another face in the crowd.

In the past, I use to produce copy for email campaigns that were designed for the masses. Yes, I was a marketing lounge lizard! Like other lounge lizards before me, I was often rejected. I grew tired of all this effort with so little return and began to look at marketing in a new light. The words of my parents and grandparents came into play, “Treat others the way you wish to be treated.” If lounge lizards were a turn off, then what was a turn on? Good looks might get me to take notice but looks are fleeting, so there was no need to develop slick looking HTML emails. Charming suitors are great at first but seem to forget their Prince Charming manners after a while, so no need to develop seemingly sincere emails that are more fluff than fact. Intelligence and the ability to hold a conversation seemed to be the long term plan for holding my attention…Eureka!!! Email marketing should be the seed to begin smart conversations, which enlist my consumers in intelligent dialogue about how my company’s resources could improve their business stance.

The road was long and difficult, as I had to change the culture of a whole company to see marketing in a totally unfamiliar way. Writing copy was a challenge, as more copy had to be written than before to cover the smallest aspects of the unique characters of our clients. Marketing plans now involved overlapping workflows to help keep the maze of materials organized. Great diligence was needed to enroll all the members of the sales team in being proactive in the program, beyond their usual wait for a lead ideology. The result: 52% closing ratio on all in-bound leads!

Greater than fifty percent closing ration! How is that possible? Consumers in a proactive marketing program are engage in dialogue. This dialogue includes knowledge base materials to education them on the programs offered. This education also includes the ROI and benefits of working with my firm. Therefore, when the sales team is handed over a lead, it is hot, knowledgeable and ready to negotiate terms. If you want to see you sales team jump on leads, hand them leads that require a minimal amount of legwork beyond the final steps to closing the deal. Nothing breeds enthusiasm like success!

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Comment by Stephanie Young on January 24, 2013 at 12:21pm: Timothy, I like your sense of humor!!!

This shift in email marketing concepts is not about cherry picking the leads that look good. It is about email nurturing each opportunity to increase the likelihood that a lead will develop it to a "cherry" deal. Where as once upon a time we might be given 200 leads, this number is probably much smaller in today's economy. Yet, we are still expected to maintain or improve upon our closing ratios of the past. Because commerce has grown into a social world market, relationship building has become a roll out the red carpet customer service tool.

Do I believe that email nurturing is like the Wizard of Oz, an all powerful tool for success...No! Email nurturing has become a new and progressive tool that has replaced the playing the numbers email for the masses game in our marketing tool box. Like most tools boxes, there is a variety of tools each designed to accomplish a different goal. Television/Radio advertising continues to be a for the masses marketing tool. "Junk" mail media is on the decline but still an available tool. Press Releases, White Pages or other written marketing tools are viable. Recently, we have added text message marketing as an optional tool.

Of course, my email box is still bombarded with Vigara ads and requests to travel to Russia to meet my bride. Being a heterosexual female, I have no desire to have a Russian bride nor the need for Viagra. Those messages are lost to me and those senders are added to my "black" list. Branding and reputation awareness is important. I feel that marketing without understanding your audience and targeting messages that speak to them is fruitless. With a little research and effort, you can build an email nurturing program that will send messages that your audience is interesting in reading and therefore decrease your opt out rate.

Comment by Timothy Martell on January 24, 2013 at 11:24am: Hi Stephanie, I appreciate the perspective and strongly agree that building relationships is important and to some degree a shift from traditional marketing. Having spent 21 years in automotive retail before becoming a vendor, I can completely relate to the "dive bar" lead source.

However, while I think your approach to this info was softer than most, a common mistake I see among marketer's serving automotive retail clients is not a shift, but an abandonment of old in place of latest greatest. Remember, just because you wouldn't date someone you met at a dive bar doesn't mean that the millions of americans who do "look for love in all the wrong places" are not still valuable consumers. Granted, you might see their love life played out on an episode of Cops, but I digress.

The point being, the world of automotive retail is and always will be to a certain extent, a numbers game. Facts are facts, if 50 people walk through your door all month, you're not going to sell 200 cars no matter how good your "relationship" is with those 50 people.

That we have access to better technology which allows for greater transparency leading to more informed decision making about marketing spend is a wonderful tool. Just like the polio vaccine was a wonderful advancement in technology that enriched the lives of millions of children and brought peace of mind to parents around the world. But the polio vaccine doesn't cure the common cold, mend a skinned knee or stop cancer. It's one tool in an arsenal of tools used to practice modern medicine.

And now to land the plane...

The reason I bring this to bear is that I would suspect that many people in the automotive industry would read this and perceive it as a fancy way of cherry picking or prejudging. "Only those good leads that came from Joe Goodrelationship are worth responding to."

The substance of what was achieved is great. But the lead in suggests that this way is the only way to achieve marketing success. Things are never that black and white and a road map for Austin, Texas will not be very helpful in Manhattan.

Kudos on your great success! Clearly, you've assembled some great tools.

Comment by Stephanie Young on January 24, 2013 at 9:40am: Thank you, Bill and Bobby.