Your Marketing Has to Survive the First Date

If you aren’t being honest in your marketing, customers will notice the mismatch between what you say and what you do.

I’m five foot six and a little bit chubby. When I turn up for a date, that’s what you get. No surprises.

I’ve also met people who looked like they ate their profile photo when they showed up for an in-person meeting. Whatever interest there might have been beforehand vanishes: the person in front of you doesn’t match what you were led to expect.

Your business can create the same problem.

Your website, newsletter, and sales conversations all give people an idea of what doing business with you will be like. If you tell them you care about your customers, that care has to show up when they become one. It has to survive an awkward question, a late delivery, or a problem that takes more than a cheerful email to solve.

The person who meets your business needs to recognize the business your marketing introduced.

I’ve spent enough time in the online dating salt mines to see the overlap. Both involve people trying to figure out whether they want a relationship, how much they’re willing to commit, and whether the other party can be trusted.

That trust accumulates at each step.

This post is based on my side of the conversation with Steve Weissman; my friend, information governance expert, and podcast partner. You can watch/listen to us below. Please like and subscribe!

A swipe right is about the level of commitment involved in clicking on a post. Someone is interested enough to find out more. You don’t get to treat it as a proposal.

Having a conversation; often initially on text equates to reading more of your content, downloading a guide, or subscribing to your newsletter. It gives them a chance to get to know you. They can see how you think, whether you understand their problems, and whether what you have to say is useful. Over time, they have more to go on than whatever your homepage says about your excellent customer service.

That’s one reason I like newsletters. They give you an ongoing opportunity to be helpful. Answer a question. Explain something confusing. Share an observation that helps someone make a decision.

You’re giving people a little experience of what it’s like to deal with you.

Of course, that only helps if the experience is a good one. If the newsletter promises useful information and delivers nothing but another sales pitch, you’ve taught the reader something about you. It probably wasn’t the lesson you intended.

The same thing happens when someone becomes a customer. You might think you’ve reached the finish line because they bought the product or signed the agreement. From their point of view, this is where they find out whether they made a good decision.

You’ve got to show up looking like your profile photo.

If your marketing promises personal attention, someone needs to pay attention. If you say you make things simple, the customer shouldn’t need a treasure map to find help. And if something goes wrong, the way you handle it becomes part of the relationship.

We spend a lot of time thinking about what to say to get people interested. It’s worth spending some of that time looking at what happens after they say yes. That’s where your claims about caring for customers become something a person can actually experience.

In my experience, it’s best to simply talk about who you are. If your online presence matches who you are in reality; well . . . there you go. That’s the goal, right? To have a relationship with someone who likes you for who you really are. There’s no difference when you’re selling whatever it is you’re selling.

I think of trust as a verb. You keep doing the things that give someone a reason to trust you. The fact that they trusted you yesterday doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to behave like a trustworthy business today.

So take a look at the expectations your marketing creates. Then follow a customer through the experience of buying from you and getting help afterward. Where does the experience live up to the promise? Where does the customer have to make excuses for you?

You may discover that the next useful marketing improvement involves changing something inside the business.

And you don’t have to fix everything at once. Start with a promise you can reliably keep. Help people understand what you do and whether it fits what they need. Give them room to get to know you, and keep being useful after they buy.

And never forget: “Putting a ring on it” doesn’t mean you get to stop making an effort.

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A newsletter gives people a chance to get to know your business before they buy — and a reason to keep hearing from you afterward. If you want to build one that sounds like you and gives readers something useful, my Newsletter-in-a-Box covers the strategy, structure, setup, and first 12 topics.

What’s keeping you from launching a newsletter? Let’s talk: bryant@simplyusefulmarketing.co.