Did I ask to be spammed?

There are a lot of ways to connect with your customers, they can be a fan on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, or even the classic opt-in to receive email updates. The important thing is knowing what to do with those customers once you have them. How do you communicate with them, how often, what do you say? These are even more important than the campaigns to attract the customers to opt-in to your marketing efforts. Not only because of "unfollows" and unsubscribing, but the long-term damage to your brand.

Open your email anytime and it is sure to have a message or two that you simply do not find useful. All too often though, there are companies sending messages that make you ask, "did I ask to be spammed?" I like to have updates from the brands I use, it is helpful, helps me remember what is going on, and hopefully provides monetary benefits to being one of the customers who is on the list.

Take a look at the messages you are sending your customers. Ask yourself honestly, does the content represent a significant value to them, or to you? Most of the time we will find that the message is more about us than the customer. This will often result in the customer feeling we are just providing spam.

You may not see that perception from the number of lost fans or customers leaving your mailing list. Many will just ignore, delete without reading, or hit the "mark as spam" button on their email program. So it is always important to remember who keeps you in business and put yourself in their shoes. Your brand reputation depends on it.

Listen to your customers - but not that way

You need to be listening to your customers. Success is that simple, as long as you remember what to do once you have heard them. A business also needs to acknowledge what their purpose is, to provide for, solve, or otherwise make our consumer's life better. Why else would they part with their money if your business did not provide something of value to them? We need to listen to our customers, but if we are not the experts who solve the problem, rather simply facilitating the literal translation of what they asked for, why would they need us?

Henry Ford once said, "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Asking a customer exactly what product they want will not yield the innovation that will make you the market leader. You need to listen to your customer's goals, desires, and aspirations to develop a product that they did not know they needed.

Focus groups and other consumer feedback help us understand what is important to people. However, as Ford learned with Edsel, consumers all loved the features of the car but that did not turn into an overwhelming success. In fact, despite the consumer feedback, Edsel is often referred to as a colossal failure. Where Ford went wrong was determining what was most important to the consumers, which was a more affordable car.

Coca-Cola made a similar mistake with a cola formula that was preferred in most taste tests. Despite the positive reaction they received in blind-tasting results, New Coke became a disaster for the company.

Conversely, Dietrich Mateschitz hired a market research firm to test his new soft-drink and received bad news. "People didn't believe the taste, the logo, the brand name." But he launched his drink anyway and Red Bull has been a tremendous success.

The lesson is, if you present product options to consumers, they will pick what they are familiar with. This is not because they are uncreative or resistant to change, but that they have to base their opinions on what they know. It's your job to introduce them to the next thing they will want.