Bad Marketing from a Successful Marketing Company

I recently received an email from an individual in my network telling me about a new product that a well known marketing company had released. Now, the person in question is someone whom I have the utmost respect for with regards to their business knowledge and how they are as a person. As far as both categories are concerned this person is at the top of my tree.

Anyhow, this email comes through telling me how good this product is, what it is about, why it has been released, what it can do for me and my business followed by links on where to buy it, what discount I am eligible for as I’m a ‘friend’ and finally, how much it will cost me. The email was ‘War and Peace’ in length. A total sales pitch which is to be expected and I’m not knocking that in the slightest.

What I am knocking is that it was totally obvious that my esteemed friend had not written the email/sales pitch. The person in question is one of the busiest individuals I know and I would bet my mortgage on it that they would not have had the time to construct such an elaborate pitch for a product that was not theirs (or was it? Maybe they were a silent partner, although again, I doubt it).

What was also obvious is that the company who owned the product had constructed the pitch and requested that it was cut and pasted into an email and sent on to my friend’s network as an endorsement. As I’m sure you are aware, referral marketing is one of the best forms there is and a referral from this person is more-or-less guaranteed to get people’s attention (it did mine).

What was wrong with this was that knowing the person who sent it, I immediately knew that they hadn’t constructed it for the reasons above so I instantly lost all ‘need’ to take action on the email (i.e. purchase or go to the website for more info). I thought if that’s how a respected marketing company market their stuff then it’s not for me as this is a terrible example of referral marketing.

In my eyes the BEST way of marketing/selling this product would have been something like this:

Hi Danny

I hope you are well. Just a quick one, I’ve been alerted to PRODUCT NAME/DESCRIPTION by COMPANY NAME. I know the people who run the company. They are fantastic at what they do and I wanted to let you know about PRODUCT NAME as I reckon you’ll get real benefit from it.

Anyway, here are the web links to it (you’ll get a discount for mentioning me!). Let me know what you think!

Cheers
FRIEND

What I’m saying here is that had my friend had told me about this in their style and not someone else’s I would have been inclined to go through to the site and purchase.

An email from this person always attracts my attention and interest to read what it’s about. By telling me about how they thought it would be good for me (she knows me and my business) she would have aroused my desire and my action would have been to look on the website and most likely purchase.

People buy people and what would have sold this product was the person selling/referring it, and this is the mistake that the Marketing Company made. They either didn’t realise the true power of referral marketing or didn’t realise the influence this person has, or to be honest, both.

They thought that an elaborate sales pitch made from them to someone they didn’t know via someone we both did was needed. Now this (or some form of sales pitch) would have been needed had they gone direct to me.

This again is another example of a company getting it oh-so right at the start (asking my friend to refer it to their network) but executing it in a totally inept fashion (not pitching it as my friend would).

Remember, “People Buy People”. Always be yourself and be consistent with how you are and your individual brand you carry.

If not, people (or at least savvy ones) will see right through you and these are the individuals/companies you want to be doing business with.

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