Honestly? If you don’t care about your customers, then yes. Marketing probably is a waste of your money.
Take yesterday. I tried to buy a car.
It was on the dealer’s website & exactly what we wanted – a old convertible, with enough room to get the dogs in the back. A bit of fun to trundle about in. Happy days.
We were ready to drive it home, there & then.
So I called the dealer…
“Hello?”
“Hi! I’m calling about the Saab you have for sale?”
“Which one?”
“The convertible – it’s blue?”
“Sorry, it’s sold”.
“Oh! That’s a shame”
“Alright then. Bye”
And he hung up.
Just like that.
Now – this is ALL this business does. It’s a small, family-owned company, selling older mid-price vehicles.
Their only job is to sell cars.
I was a cash buyer, ready & willing to buy a car from them, that very afternoon.
But they made it impossible for me to give them my money.
It’s crazy!
They could’ve asked what we were looking for; was there anything we were interested in? Could they keep our details on file for when something else came in?
But no. It had sold. And that was that.
They just didn’t care.
And it got me thinking.
I bet they spend a good chunk of money on marketing their business.
They have a website, which they’ve paid to have built. They pay to host that website. I can see they spend money on Google pay-per-click adverts. They pay to advertise their cars in Autotrader.
They may well spend money on a million other marketing methods.
They pay their staff to clean the cars & photograph the cars & man the forecourt & take prospective customers out on test drives.
But they made it 100% impossible for me to buy a car from them.
And I bet that, when sales inevitably start to slide, they’ll blame the marketing. Because it’s easier than facing up to the real problem, that they simply don’t care about their customers. Yup – it’ll be that pesky marketing to blame.
THIS is why at Tell My Story, we only work with business we love – and who we genuinely believe offer a great product and/or service.
You can tell as soon as you walk through the door.
Great companies simply care about their customers. They care about solving the problems that your customers are facing. About meeting their needs & wants; and respecting that you NEED those people for your business – and your family – to thrive.
These are the wonderful businesses that we get to champion, day after day. We get to connect them with people who’ll become customers, because we KNOW that when they walk through that door, those businesses will be there to help. Their marketing works. And everyone wins.
If you care about your customers, then spending money to get more of them is never a waste.
But that car dealership? They don’t care about their customers. No marketing in the world will help.
It truly is money down the drain…
Until next time
Tell My Story 