Better brains, better marketing

Your Customers Owe You Nothing So Stop Acting Like You’re The First Fox In The Hen House

Wipe that stupid smile off your face

You did it! You got my attention! I needed a new coffeemaker, so I clicked on your link and started moseying around your site.

As I’m looking around at your impressive selection of the newest and smartest coffee makers, a pop-up pops up.

I hate these damn things. But what the hey, I’ll just X out of it.

But wait.

There’s no X on this pop-up. How do I get out of it?

I look in all four corners and even in the middle. I click inside of it and outside of it. It won’t go away.

I put my glasses on to see if it’s in gray-scale and hard for me to see.

There it is! So light I can barely see it.

I click the X and your stupid pop-up disappears.

I really need a new coffee pot, so I click on the shiniest one on the page.

Just as I’m admiring the coffeemaker’s perfectly polished stainless steel carafe, boom!

Another pop-up.

Dammit.

Because I really like that coffeepot and I want to read the specs on it, I break down and enter my email address into your pop-up. I’m taken away to a new page that tells me I need to check my email before continuing.

I check my email and click the link to confirm I’m a real live person with a working email address.

(As a side note, when I got back to my email after visiting your site, I had five, yes five emails from your company trying to sell me something. What’s up with that? 🙄)

Do you think this makes me feel you care about me, your customer? Do you think this behavior makes me want to patronize your business and tell my friends to shop at your store?

What would you do if a brick and mortar store did this to you? Imagine you stop in at a local furniture store because you need a new sofa. The store doesn’t have quite what you want, but the saleswoman convinces you to sign up for a discount program before you leave.

The next day, trying to figure out all the hoopla over “Tiger King,” you’re interrupted by a knock on the door.

It’s the saleslady from the furniture store. She says she just wanted to let you know about a new sale at the store.

Would this intrusion aggravate you? What if she knocks on your door every day to tell you about another new sale?

How much of this would you tolerate before you either ignore her or contemplate calling the police?

There’s little difference between relentlessly knocking at the door of my home or dropping five emails a day to my inbox.

They both suck. And they both make me think little of the company who engages in these activities.

Yes, You’re Pissing Off Your Customers

I just read an article about pop-up ads and why people hate them. That’s right, it’s not just me.

Apparently, everyone hates pop-up ads.

We hate them so much that the creator of this beastly tool, Ethan Zuckerman, publicly apologized for creating the damn things.

(Oh yeah, as I moved my mouse through the article, I got a pop-up ad.)

Despite Mr. Zuckerman’s apology, many marketing experts claim pop-up ads work and actively encourage businesses and other marketers to use them.

Think about that for a minute. Do you really believe your customer thinks you respect them if you know they mostly hate something, but you keep doing it, anyway?

Here’s a few common reasons experts give for continuing to use pop-up ads, and arguments about why those reasons are bogus:

1. If a pop-up is well-designed, customers won’t mind seeing them.

Who cares how well-designed the ad is? A pop-up ad is intrusive, and it interrupts your customer’s experience at your site. Deliberately. No matter how beautiful or interesting a pop-up is, it’s still a pop-up ad.

2. If the content is relevant, the pop-up isn’t annoying.

Pop-ups are annoying by definition. If you have something to read or see on your website, your customer will find it. You need not hammer them over the head with a pop-up.

3. Customers aren’t complaining so they must not mind or care.

What? How easy is it for a site user to complain on your web-site and how soon will you address their complaint? Especially if they bought nothing? And how many will take the time to complain rather than leave? What have you lost in your stubborn pursuit of pop-up perfection?

4. The bounce rate hasn’t increased, so customers must be okay with the pop-ups.

Do you know your brand perception? How many customers are sharing information about your company on social media? How many customers recommend your company to their friends and family? Those are questions that explain your bounce rate in depth. Do you track these things? Or do you just send 20 emails a week to each customer and call it a day? Automation is great, right?

I want you to know I’m not picking on marketers. They have tons of brilliant ideas that can help drive customers to your business. But maybe instead of building pop-up ads, you should ask them how to build brand trust and loyalty.

Besides, why annoy your customers with intrusive ads when they don’t even work that well?

Pop-ups ads that experts consider highly successful convert at 9 or 10%, but the average pop-up’s conversion rate is 3.09%. The conversion rate is the percentage of people who took action when they saw the pop-up ad. To achieve a 3% conversion rate, you would need 3 people out of one hundred to give you their email address after seeing your pop-up ad.

I don’t know about you, but 3% doesn’t sound like a lot to me. Not enough to risk pissing off the other 90% of potential customers who saw your ad.

And especially not to a small business trying to make important first impressions on their customers.

You know, customers who might actually respond to the emails you collect?

There’s A Better Way!

Do you care about what your customers think of you and your company?

I hope so because you can’t survive without them. It’s in your best interest to care very much what your customers think about you.

As a small business, you must make the most of every customer experience. Your customer’s first impression has to rock their world or you risk losing them forever.

That means treating every single encounter on your website as if it were from an old and trusted friend, no matter how they came in or how they respond to your marketing techniques.

The question is, how do you ask for email addresses without offending your customer? Turns out there are actually some excellent methods out there and you should consider them.

Look at Neil Patel’s run-down of ten ways to capture email addresses:

And Gill Andrews has great info about engaging with your customer, too:

And you can’t miss the great Mark Schaefer:

Look, there’s a right way and a wrong way to ask a customer to engage with your website. In marketing, so many bad actors have jumped in with dirty tactics and it’s difficult for legitimate businesses to find their advertising sweet spot.

Customers know you need to advertise and many understand that you want to track the return of your advertising dollars. But while they may know this intellectually, emotionally they don’t care.

Small business runs this country, but when a customer visits your website, you’re on their dime. Literally. You owe your customers everything. They, however, owe you nothing.

Did you hear that? Nothing.

Your customer cares about what you can do for them. So show them.

Treat them like family. Give them what they want. Your attention. Your respect. Your loyalty.

Make them want to come back again and again and again.

You won’t regret it.