Tag: clueless marketing

By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business-general, Customer Service as Marketing, General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

In one day, I had two interactions with people reaching out on behalf of their employer that made me scratch my head.

I got telemarketed by a woman who claimed to have sent me some stuff I never received. She didn’t understand the simplest questions like “was it by postal or email?” (answer, repeated 3x: “Mail”) “What domain was it coming from?”

To top it off, the follow-up email, or what I believe was the follow-up email, came from a different domain and was signed by a different person, but it mentioned a conversation with their office.

And then there was the person who private-messaged me on Facebook about her social media marketing services. When I clicked the link, I was appalled at the sloppy grammar–NOT a way to get me to do business. When I told her that careful writing matters to me and that I wouldn’t be doing business, she started asking whether I would scout for her as an affiliate.

Who vets these people? If you have people representing your company, they should leave a GOOD impression with prospects. Yet over and over, I see businesses being harmed by the clueless, aggressive, unhelpful people they hire.

Gotta wonder.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with ,

Latest idiocy in my inbox:

Avoid the PR Spam Blacklist

Last week a well-regarded blogger published and blacklisted the names of individual PR firms and publicists who have sent “unsolicited (and almost always irrelevant) product pitches.”

While we know that you do not set out deliberately to “spam” journalists, it is clear that the practices that we have relied on in the past are no longer effective for engaging today’s media. Many of these practices are, in fact, counterproductive.

Our industry is changing.  And as professionals, we must adapt to the way that our audience – the media – is doing business today. Journalists want story ideas they can use. Journalists don’t want an email box full of spam.

New rules require new tools. And we think our application…(Named product and sales pitch begin here)

Hello–how did this happen to get into my in-box? If you guessed as a spam, you’re right. I have no prior relationship with this company, and if spamming me with a message about how spamming is ineffective is any indication of their intelligence, I’m not going to have a relationship with them.

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