Addressing the Customer’s Distorted Lens
One would think we would be at the end of the era where business, even small business, see their website as a token billboard. There are billions of pages online – if you’re looking for a billboard then you couldn’t have arrived at a more crowded trailer park of disparate everybody. Business websites have to be about return on investment.
What some businesses are still missing is that a website isn’t just an extension of the push advertising model. You see it online all the time – possibly magnified when businesses embark on Facebook and Twitter marketing strategies. But the disparate everybody gets hammered with this broadcast rubbish day in and day out so the messages drone into the background.
Give the following strategy a serious attempt…
- Stand still for a moment and put your hand out to an individual and have a conversation
- Engage in an online version of normal social interaction with your target audience
- Accept that this is a high risk strategy but a high reward strategy
That sounds easy until you get out there and try it but that strategy is your way to cut through the billboard trailer park. But it requires you to stop seeing this as a broadcast push business model. Flip that over for a second, imagine you’re at an awesome party with movie stars and if they tapped you on the shoulder you will get more business… you obviously don’t stand on a soapbox and spruke yourself, so what do you do?
Oh you follow that little list… stand still, shake hands, engage in conversation and accept that it is high risk and high reward. You could blow it and trip over, or forget your name when Scarlett Johansson grabs your hand. So friggen’ what! She grabbed your hand, for fuck sake!
The real problem with failing to understand this simple mind-shift is that the world doesn’t see you through your own eyes – the disparate everybody see you through a distorted lens of culture and attention deficit and personal bias. They see a fraction of a moment of a glimpse of what you’re currently investing in a broadcast approach to grab their hand.
Scarlett Johannson (of the disparate everybody) is telling you to fuck the hell out of her way because she’s busy, she only saw you for 2 seconds and she thinks you might be a stalker. And rightly so. You probably are if you’re pushing your message aggressively.
It’s pretty incredible how that human moment of touching other human beings in personal social interaction clears away a significant part of that distorted lens.
In fact, the next time you’re sitting at a conference or dinner and someone is introduced to you don’t even volunteer your card or credentials up front. Just have a conversation… tell them what you can do for them at the end. When they like you. When they love you.
Of course by that stage you know enough about them to be able to service their real needs. Its a win-win.
