This session is a bit different. Mel Abraham shares with you a tale of irresponsible marketing that I experienced recently. The goal is to understand what marketing should be really about, how we can set it for success and the ways to create connection with customers and your team.

The Tale of Irresponsible Marketing

I worked with a service provider that helped me to reach and connect with my customers. Within a week, the CEO makes a blog post which starts out as "Death of the business name". It reflects on how the company's creator looks back at his four year old business and realizes that he secretly despised it. This story spans to three posts over a week and it keeps the clients in suspense about the future of the company.

The idea behind it was to create suspense, generate attention and then share their re-structuring plans. The post generated a lot of attention in a negative way. The way it was presented, abused the pristine client-provider relationship.  He should have started with the re-structuring idea instead of polarizing the customer-base.

Lessons that came out of this irresponsible marketing effort

First we need to understand the objectives of marketing.

- It's to create relationships that will convert into sales.

There are 5 objectives:

1. To capture the market's attention so they notice what you have to offer and how it'll make a difference in their life.
2. To communicate with empathy to show that you care about the customers, clients and your team.
3. To create deep seated loyalty by offering your customers a solution that doesn't just solve the issue but also creates a bigger vision for them.
4. To convey low risk opportunity or entry point for your customers to do business with you.
5. To connect emotionally so that your customers are with you because they believe in you.

The five questions we need to ask when deciding to go on a marketing campaign:

1. Is it responsible?
2. Is it caring and compassionate?
3. Is it respectful?
4. Does it build trust?