Tag Archives: marketing mistakes

No More Self-Running Videos!

Posted on October 28, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I hate self-running videos! I immediately close the page and don’t go back.

I’ve written before about how self-running videos are counter productive if the site visitor is at work or staying up late at home. How likely do you think the prospect is to buy from you if your self-running video blares out and gets her in trouble at work, rouses a disapproving spouse, or wakes a cranky baby? Not at all!

Lots of us multitask. That should not be news to anyone. So if I’m already listening to audio or video, do you think I want to have two voices yammering at once? Not even!

Also, if I open your email and click a link to see what you’re offering, and there’s a video, I may leave the tab open but go on with my phone conversation or whatever, planning to go back later.

When the page first opens, I turn off the video. Later, though, with a bunch of tabs and windows open, if I have to restart the browser for any reason, I have to go through all those tabs to find your stupid video and turn it off again. If that happens, unless the video is a training module that I’ve paid to see, I close it and never go back.

Try to think like a potential customer. Our worlds do not revolve around you! Do not try to impose on our time, or you will not get another chance.

I’ve started unsubscribing from the lists of marketers that use self-running videos. And I am not alone.

Now do you understand?


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Posted in Internet Marketing

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Latest Is Not the Greatest for Marketing

Posted on May 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

If you post a marketing video, you want the most possible people to view it, right?

So why make it so that only those who have the latest, up-to-the-minute versions of software installed can watch it? When you do that, you lose a lot of potential customers!

Unless your video is demonstrating the latest special effects game, software, or movie, and your audience is young, affluent geekboys, you don’t need the latest version of Flash, released 5 minutes ago.

Today I received an email with a link to a video touting an Internet marketing product. From past experience with the seller, this will be a talking-head video. It will not need special effects. Five-year-old technology would work just fine.

Yet here I am with a less-than-one-year-old state-of-the-art laptop, and I can’t watch it because I don’t have Flash 10.1.01.1.1.1….whatever. In case it’s not obvious, that’s bad marketing.

(Yes, yes, I stopped work, closed all 25 browser windows and some other stuff, and installed it, but most people can’t or won’t bother to do that.)

Most people are not running the latest version of anything. If they are using their computer at work, they can’t. Most corporations deliberately stay at least a year behind the latest—and sometimes more—they want to wait for the bugs to be swatted and the security patches to be available before they update their software. It saves support costs. 

Corporate IT departments also set up the computers so that users cannot install anything not provided by IT. That also saves greatly on support costs.

And most people at home do not have the latest and greatest. Many do not even have the latest operating system. Like the big corporations, they may feel “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Or, no matter how intelligent and well educated, they may not want to get into PC maintenance.  You would be surprised how many affluent people just buy a new computer every two or three years—just like the big corporations they work for or with—instead of installing new software all the time. Adults are often using hand-me-downs from their high-school or college-age kids!

So if you eliminate everyone (even executives) using corporate computers (including laptops), everyone who is too busy/lazy to update software all the time, and also those who are using older computers and possibly cannot run the latest version of, say, Flash, you have just eliminated a huge percentage of potential customers—whatever your product. 

Is that smart? I don’t think so.

There’s a reason they call it “the bleeding edge.” You’re bleeding profits.


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Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing

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Why Snark About Marketing?

Posted on January 30, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Why snark about marketing, you may ask? Well, as a customer, I find that the little annoyances (as well as the big ones) add up. Some of these marketing gaffes are so annoying that I carefully avoid certain marketers and their products. Who needs the aggravation?

I kept wondering why so many marketers, on line and off, cannot see how annoying some of their practices are and how much they alienate customers. Sometimes I contact vendors directly. I figure I’m doing them a favor. Other times, I just let it go. After all, there are plenty of other vendors to buy from. 

Remember, success is not measured how much traffic you get. Success is measured by net profit. And that is mainly determined by how many people you get to buy your products and by how many customers you get to return and buy more. 

Repeat customers are much more profitable. Needless to say, ticking off your buyers (or potential buyers) not a good way to create loyal customers. And I found so many little things ticking me off as a customer that I finally decided to blog about it. 

Not that you would do make of those annoying marketing gaffes… But it seems sometimes that people are so close to their own business, especially Internet marketers, that they just don’t see how annoying some of their practices are to customers.

So here they are: Pet peeves of buyers (or potential buyers) and things to avoid to keep from losing customers you could have otherwise kept.


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Posted in General

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