Marketing 101 - Rule 2
In the first rule of marketing, we said:
Like a matador in the ring with a languid bull, your first job is to get attention.
What you don't want to do is act like a bull-in-a-china-closet. Rule number 2 is, "Don't offend anybody."
In my opinion, this takes special skill. You have to be able to see not only outside yourself and people like you, you have to be able to imagine every possible variable in prospective customers.
Face-to-face, sure, that's easy. You can tell by the way the person is dressed and carries himself or herself, the way he or she talks, and myriad other signals that help you size up the individual before you.
But like the old cartoon of one dog sitting in front of the computer, typing in a chat room to the other, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."
You can't see your prospects. You don't know whether they're rocket scientists or 8th-grade-dropouts. You don't know whether they are loaded or carrying loaded weapons. You can't tell if they want to buy your product or see whether they can weasel it out of you for free.
The more "outside of yourself" you can be, like Meryl Streep literally putting on the other person's ratty sweater and drawing wrinkles on her face with an eyebrow pencil to feel what it was like to be old (to understand her beloved grandmother), the more in the other person's skin you can become in your communication, the more successful you will be.
Specifically, when you write your website copy, your sales letter, your email follow ups (including autoresponders and broadcasts), pour your heart out. Talk like you would talk to your long lost best friend.
Then reread and edit your copy to consider broader circumstances. Edit as though your friend were richer, then as if poorer. Go through it again as though your friend just lost a spouse, doesn't know what is the best thing to do right now, loves your stuff, hates your stuff, is glad to get your email, is extremely busy and mildly annoyed by your email, is about to delete your email without reading the entire subject line...
After that many passes, there's a good chance your communication shows you know how to...
Put yourself in the other person's shoes. A lesson you were probably getting from your mom (SAMPLE edit: a person who cared about you - because some reading this will have had no mom) by the time you were in the second grade (SAMPLE edit: a U.S. convention, but I'll stick with it, knowing most readers will be in the U.S. and others will understand enough to move to the next step).
Are you getting the point? Offending people, causing them undue discomfort, making them believe you do not understand them and therefore cannot care, will cost you 8-9 customers (prospective) out of 10. And if you already know 100 must listen to you to generate one sale, and you offend 8 out of every 10, you now have to get close to 1000 people to listen to your message to generate one sale.
Words and phrases that may offend, depending upon your market:
- anyone with half a brain
- what's wrong with you
- only idiots don't buy my product
- black or white
- anyone can afford this
- this is a no brainer
- (exclusive language: one gender, one race, etc.)
Yes, it's possible to find examples of nincompoops making sales even though they do not consider people's particular situations. (John McCain currently has a large following in spite of his not knowing he owns eight properties during the biggest housing crisis in history. (source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12700.html)
To have long-term staying power, to know your customers and engage in relationship marketing, be nice. Sketch in the broad strokes, lines that include as many people as possible.
[They] drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took [them] in.
--Edward Markham, incl. lang. supp.