Being compassionate and empathetic, as a business owner or marketer is not the same as pretending to be everyone’s friend.
Yes, we all want to feel like we’re liked; but, the truth is, your customers don’t want you invading their life. Involving yourself in their personal life, doing a “deep dive” into their life. All your customers really give a shit about whether you can solve problem X for them? Will you solve that problem with minimal disruption to their lives? Then, and only then, do they start to give a shit about your ethics and your morals. But again, it’s not whether they could be friends with you. It’s to do with whether you’re going to treat them properly.
Don’t be a creepy marketer
Blurring the lines is a dangerous prospect for you and for your customers. They don’t want that. And, you don’t have the time or the energy to maintain that. Concentrate on the problem that you solve, stop trying to be everyone’s friend and just go and solve the problem. Don’t be a creepy marketer.
Pretending to be everyone’s friend doesn’t come across as sincere. It comes across as smarmy and irritating. When I ask a business to solve a problem for me. I don’t want them to ask me about my children, I don’t want them to ask me about my personal life, I just want them to solve the problem for me and that’s it. I want them to do so with minimal disruption to my life.
If they can do that then their values and their ethics, morals, and behaviours matter. But only as it pertains to dealing with me, what they do outside of dealing with me is not my problem.
Marketers Vs. Amazon
In recent years, the world and his wife seems to have developed a problem with Amazon. This is especially prevalent in the world of marketers.
“Amazon are the biggest bastards in the world”, so proclaim the virtue signalling marketers. And yet, Amazon has the biggest company on planet earth. Everybody is still using it. And you and I both know that Amazon does not give a shit about you or me. Amazon creates a service that is easy to use, with minimal need for interaction with other humans. They create convenience. They occasionally put out a marketing message that implies that they care but we all know that’s bullshit. Nobody wants Jeff Bezos to come around their house for tea, do they?
We all want next day delivery, we all want one click purchases, we all want convenience. And that’s why Amazon are the biggest company on Planet fucking earth.
They make your life easier, they don’t cuddle you, they don’t sing you lullabies at bedtime, they just make your life easier. And that’s it. The entire world is paying for convenience.
Start selling convenience, that’s a marketers job
As a business, how can you make the lives of your customers easier? How can you make their life more convenient? How can you take the hassle out of a process? That right there is how you’re going to grow, develop, and build your brand.
All the fluffy stuff looks nice on paper, and other marketers will indeed congratulate you for being such a fluffy and wonderful person. But your customers could not give a flying fuck. They just want you to make their life easier. So go and make their life easier.
Deploy some self awareness
As a marketer your job is to understand your audience. If you have been doing the creepy marketer routine then it would appear that you’ve missed the mark a little. Well, actually quite a lot.
If you’re struggling with empathy then turn it inward. Think about how you would feel on the receiving end of such tactics. I actually wrote a little something about self awareness that you should take a look at, you can find that here https://mybizacademy.co.uk/be-more-self-aware-its-not-hard
Need some help with this?
If you have found yourself falling into the creepy marketer trap then I can help. Head over to my website and send me a message, we can have a chat and get you back on track in no time at all. https://mikethebizguy.co.uk/Contact