Bloghound

Why don’t we get rid of the small obstacles to marketing success? Why live with small, thorny nits that could be easily fixed and put aside?

Last week in Iowa, Sen. Hillary Clinton told a crowd, “Well, I guess people will keep talking about my clothes and my hair.” Why not just fix those issues and get them out of the way if they’re so annoying to people — and affecting her marketing campaign for U.S. President? Surely Sen Clinton has contacts who could help her fix something as simple as a consistent hair style and wardrobe? (Maybe Nancy Pelosi? Dianne Feinstein?)

My firm is about to change accounting firms because of two small — but highly annoying — business practices that we’ve repeatedly flagged the accounting firm about. They’ve recognized the issues, but over the past two years have never fixed them. When interviewing other firms we raised these annoyances. The other accountants acknowledged the problems and explained the business practices they’ve put in place to solve them. Hooray.

Or consider shopping around for the best CD rate from banks. In browsing local banks recently, I found information about how to open CDs but no rates. I called the three banks and got the reply, “Oh we don’t like to list the rates online. We want people to call us so we can offer personalized service.” I just want to open a CD, no personalized service needed. Instead they’re annoying customers. They won’t get my business. Why not solve this small problem and list the rates?

We marketers shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, but we should probably fix that stuff to get it out of the way.

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