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Nutritionalmarketing.com Weekly Newsletter Update
- Marketing Ideas, Information and Tips Nutritional Retailers Want
and Need!!
Volume 4, Issue #29 - July 17, 2003
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In this issue:
Ready, aim, fire. Fire harder!
Should there
be a do-not-mail list, too?
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Ready, aim, fire.
Fire harder!
Some wonderful telemarketer
just made my day!
As many of you know,
I’ve been on paternity leave for a couple of weeks following the birth
of our son. It’s been great! Well, like all good things coming to
an end, at some point in time we need to come back to the real world
and get back to work.
Over the last week,
I‘ve been doing just that, getting back into work. Sorting through
mail, email and messages. It’s amazing how much stuff comes across
my desk each day. No wonder it’s getting harder by the minute to get
your marketing message noticed.
So today I took
a call that wasn’t scheduled. This is a big deal. I’m down to almost
normal and taking calls!
I picked up the
phone and said, "Good afternoon, this is Marty." Without a pause to
take a breath, the caller said, "Mr. Robinson, this is Bill with Bill’s
Custom Imprinting. We can put your name on anything! I sent you a
brochure a few days ago. Do you remember seeing it?"
For those of you
who don’t know, before I started Nutritional Marketing, my company was
Robinson & Associates.
This amazing telemarketer
used the name of the business and just made me Mr. Company. I wonder
if they get many calls for Mr. Xerox?
I told him that
I didn’t remember his brochure and that I was not interested in working
with a company that used telemarketers who didn’t even know my name.
He replied, "Oh, is Mr. Robinson available?" Hello Mr. Wizard, you’re
shooting yourself in the foot. Stop pulling the trigger.
When I said there
is no Mr. Robinson, he then asked if I’m the person who makes buying
decisions. I said I am.
So he started over,
explaining that he could put my name on anything!
This company doesn’t
know what my name is, nor does it care and, yet, it wants to put my
name on anything. I wonder what name they would use?
He never addressed
the fact that he used the wrong name, never accepted responsibility.
Then he said, "I’m sorry the information I had is incorrect. Could
I get your name and correct it?"
This is why we now
have a national do-not-call list. This is why people hate telemarketers.
This is why, when I suggest that people do telemarketing, they say it
will never work.
What this guy did
is not telemarketing. He was smiling and dialing, hoping to guess right
once and get a live person. I was that live person but he didn’t do
his research to know who owned the company or what our needs are.
Telemarketing is
not bad. There are just bad telemarketers. Do your homework, know
what people’s needs are and be professional.
One last thought.
After you shoot yourself in the foot, stop shooting. Don’t just reload
and fire some more.
FYI - The names
have been changed to save the marketing morons!
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You'll be glad you did!
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Should there be
a do-not-mail list, too?
For those of you
who didn’t hear, you can visit the Web site http://www.donotcall.gov
and ask to be removed from all telemarketing call lists. The media
has been all over this. It’s designed to reduce the number of annoying
calls we get during dinner or as we’re trying to give our kids a bath.
I was watching TV
when one of the cable news stations received an email from a viewer
who said he would like to see a national do-not-mail list established.
He said he would pay to be on a list of people who do not receive third-class
or bulk mail.
I thought this was
a very interesting concept. People could opt out and just not get certain
kinds of mail. What a great idea. Think of all of the trees that would
be saved.
What really struck
me is that many people must be doing as poor a job with their direct
mail as the company that called me did with it’s telemarketing.
I often think that
the difference between "junk" mail and other mail is not the cost of
the postage. The difference is the value of the information it presents.
The postage doesn’t set the value; the information the mailer provides
does.
Please take a moment
and look at your last mailer. Did it offer value to the reader so they
wanted to read on? Did it help make their life better for reading it?
Do it do anything positive for the reader?
FYI " Just talking
about your product or service doesn’t do any of these.
For any mailer to
rise above the roar of junk mail, it needs to offer the reader value.
It doesn’t have to be "War and Peace" but it needs to have some meaty
content so the reader feels that their time was well spent.
If people continue
to send out mail that just wastes the reader’s time, I think we should
be able to opt out and put ourselves on a do-not-mail list. We as marketers
need to raise the standard and provide more good information rather
than just fluff!
As always, have
fun with marketing!
Marty
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They need RespirActin!
http://www.respiractin.com/
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Quote
"Incompetents invariably
make trouble for people other than themselves." Larry McMurtry, "Lonesome
Dove"
The telemarketer
who called me was incompetent and was nothing but a bother to me. You
can do better. Think and put real professional effort into your marketing,
whether it be telemarketing or direct mail.
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Information provided by Martin Baird and NutritionalMarketing.com.
Visit us at
http://www.nutritionalmarketing.com/.
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Please note that
all of the marketing ideas that are mentioned in our enewsletter or
on our web site are designed to help you grow your business. As you
know one size does not fit all and some of the ideas may work better
for specific applications.
