Sales? What's that?

The coffee maker I've had - and been happy with - for around 20 years is beginning to show its age, so I thought I'd get a new one. Sadly, the page on its maker's website made no effort to retain a loyal customer.

Now, if a customer went into a shop and said to the assistant, 'I'm looking for a Cafe Mattino Coffee Machine', the assistant would take it that the customer either had one of the devices, or it had been recommended to them. Online, someone putting the exact name into Google [as I had] and arriving on the product's web page is, effectively, saying the same. 

In the shop, however, the salesperson would not just say 'it's obsolete' and leave it at that. I'll go further and say that wouldn't use the term 'obsolete' [who does?] they would use a softer term, such as 'it's no longer made', or 'it's no longer available'. 

But, and here's the point of this posting, the assistant would follow up - probably in the same sentence - with '... but we do have its replacement'. 

Indeed, a good salesperson would be more likely to say something like, 'Oh they were great machines weren't they, very popular - but the technology they used was getting old, so Morphy Richards replaced it with an updated version which has all the old features plus some new ones, and it looks more modern too.'

So why doesn't the website say something similar, with a link to the new product? 

I'm going to make the suggestion that it's because no one with a sales background was involved in the development of the website.

MINI? That's a BMW, right?

When teaching, I encouraged students to bring in examples of good and bad marketing to discuss as a class exercise. It seems old habits die hard – an ex-student sent me this.

The ad appeared on the home page of Microsoft Edge. What errors can you find?

Her answers – with which I agree – are shown below.


1 The ad is for MINI … the nice shiny car in the picture isn’t a MINI.

2 Each word is capitalized, even the one-character indefinite article. ‘MINI official UK site – request a 48 hour test drive’ is better. I’ll accept that beauty can be in the eye of the beholder in this case.

3 The message is rather formal – almost a command. ‘Request’ is also vague – requests can be rejected. Why not something like; Book your 48-hour test drive on MINI’s official UK website. Note, ‘site’ and ‘website’ are different things, there’s plenty of space for the extra four characters. And yes, you may think it picky, but ’48-hour’ is a compound adjective describing a noun, so it should be hyphenated.

4 A domain name thing. As per the copy text, the brand is MINI [an issue from when BMW bought mini] – so the presented domain name should be MINI.co.uk. You all know domain names aren’t case sensitive don’t you? I’m also wary about using capitals in directory and file names of a URL, but it’s not a deal breaker in this example.

5 I’ve saved the best – that is, worst – ‘til last. There is no such web page as https://www.mini.co.uk/New/Car – so the link doesn’t work … which means the ad is a TOTAL* waste of time and resources. * uppercase for emphasis.

Marketing on TikTok?

I came across a promotion from a firm that acts as an agent for advertising on TikTok using influencers.

The sell …

‘We have seen some phenomenal results on the platform by driving over 1M installs through TikTok Influencers and counting… ‘

Note: installs, not purchases [CPI stands for cost per install - I had to look it up :-) ].

The guide to ‘Become a TikTok Influencer CPI Master’

Tip number one:

The more entertaining the content = The more views.

Welllll … knock me down with a feather, I would never have thought of that. Best get in touch with every media that has ever existed and let them in to this secret.

Tip number two:

Include a call to action.

Again; a revelation! These influencer marketers are soooo innovative and leading edge.

Tip number three:

Select influencers carefully.

Damn. I thought you just used a random selector app [I’m sure there is an influencer who will recommend one to you].

Tip number three:

Track results. OK, I’ve given up with the sarcasm.

I checked the customers – sorry, ‘the wonderful brands we’ve had the opportunity of working with – of the ‘world’s largest network of TikTok Influencers’ listed on the website and I’d heard of only one of the eight. No real surprise there – I’m in the wrong target segment. However, all were apps with a link to online ‘entertainment’. So – for example – a youngster watches TikTok video of influencer doing ‘dance exercise’ and follows the influencer’s advice to download the free exercise app.

So, yes, the marketers have done their job … but if you’re selling anything other than apps to teenagers – and that’s going to be 99.99999999% of all products, try some proper marketing.

* Note that throughout their website ‘influencer’ is presented as a proper noun i.e. with a capital ‘I’.  Why not try the same with your job to make you seem more important?

AI or just plain dumb?

I got an unsolicited email from hypedsports.com - if that's not bad enough, here's the special offer products shown in the email ...

You don't need AI to know that Alan is a male name ... 'nuff said?

Do these folk preach what they practice?

Let's ignore the fact that this was a spam email - I've looked at the syllabus for this Digital Marketing Institute's courses ... and [obviously] it doesn't include email marketing. I wonder if the rest of their training is based on their practice? 

Don't copy this awful practice

I was on the website of newchic.com and spotted a top I liked the look of that was reduced. So I put in the basket and went to checkout. 

However, I had already noticed that there was nothing on the pages I had visited that mentioned the cost of shipping/delivery … so I was already a bit suspicions. On the checkout page still no mention of a shipping cost. So I clicked on the ‘pay by PayPal’ link and was taken to Paypal where I logged in and was presented with this page …

Hmmm, I thought, this is the amount of money that I’m agreeing to pay out of my PayPal account – must be free shipping. But when I clicked on ‘continue’ I got this page. 

Wellll … I can only assume they know more than me – but isn’t it illegal to increase a price after the customer has agreed [with his bank] on how much to pay the seller? 

It is certainly a case of bait ‘n switch. 

It is certainly an example of what NOT to do on an e-commerce site. 

Even if I had liked the top more than I did, I would have cancelled the order. I say cancelled, but there wasn’t a ‘cancel order’ button. I just closed the page.

I will keep my eye on my PayPal account to make sure that newchic.com doesn’t steal any of my money.

Oh, and the cost of shipping was a bit steep for a top - though ironically had they been upfront about the total cost I might have been happy to pay nearly £20 for the item.

Standard practice offline not repeated online

If a product is discontinued as a stock line at DIY supermarket B&Q its space on the shelves is taken by a new product or the facings of neighbouring products extended.

Not so online.

Why?


But it gets worse.

Elsewhere on the site a smaller size of the product was available.

Sigh.

SunLife hanging on

I can't even remember doing anything that would warrant SunLife sending me an email, so it could have been spam. 

Any hoo ... when I clicked on the 'unsubscribe' link, instead of the usual one-click to unsubscribe, I had to fill in a form.

Not illegal, but very poor practice likely to upset folk more than the 'spam' email.

Do as we teach ... not as we do

I'm a big fan of Google's Digital Garage initiative ... but in this example they got it wrong.

Yep,  on a page about courses for building a website a chunk of the text is over-writing itself.

Now, I'll bet the designers would say that it is because I'm using Firefox [the page does work properly on Google-owned Chrome :-) ] but that's being company centric not customer centric.

Sadly, this is not the first time I've had problems with the Digital Garage ... 

 https://getoutsidethebottle.blogspot.com/2018/03/email-still-third-class-citizen.html

Not so good at showing what you're good at

The University of Sunderland was justly proud of its QS Stars award.

Shame it wasn't too bothered about the web page that trumpeted that award ... otherwise the images on it wouldn't have been broken.

Do'h.