Can Marketing Harm Your Business? Understanding the Costs and Solutions
Marketing has been around for centuries and has been used to boost sales and promote products. But with the rise of technology, advertising has become ubiquitous, and businesses are relying on it more than ever to find new customers and grow their brand. However, overzealous marketing can harm your business in more ways than one. In this post, we will explore the costs of intrusive marketing and offer solutions to avoid damaging your brand.
The Impact of Intrusive Marketing
When marketing becomes intrusive, it can be harmful to your business. Customers may spend more time deleting irrelevant emails or shredding send-outs than actually using your product. This wastes their time and can lead to a negative perception of your brand. Intrusive marketing is not just a financial cost; it can also be environmentally and socially damaging. In the UK alone, 17.5 billion pieces of junk mail are sent and received every year, and each household receives an average of 650 pieces of junk mail annually.
When Does Marketing Become Intrusive?
As a business owner, it’s natural to want to promote your business and find new customers. However, this enthusiasm can lead to overzealous marketing, which can annoy potential or existing customers. For example, if a customer barely uses your app or has bought from your ecommerce platform once, does that warrant emails fortnightly or more frequently? Customers may feel overwhelmed by marketing from multiple businesses, and their inboxes may be inundated with unwanted messages. Intrusive marketing fails because it is not timely or relevant to the customer.
The Social Cost of Junk Mail
Clearing inboxes of junk mail takes time, every day. On a single day, this might take only 10 minutes. Over a week, it’s an hour. In a year, that’s a whole working week spent deleting junk emails. This time is time that could be spent with loved ones, on hobbies, or on holiday. This is an unwanted chore that none of us signed up for. To waste time on such a scale is impolite and invasive.
The Cost to Your Brand
If marketing is not timely or relevant, it can push customers to unsubscribe and damage your brand image. Interrupting a customer’s day too often can lead to the loss of their interest for good. The lifetime value of a customer can be lost simply because you pushed your business onto them at the wrong time and in an irrelevant way.
The Environmental Cost
Aside from the social and business costs, there’s also the environmental cost to consider. In a time when many businesses are striving to build a reputation as carbon neutral and environmentally-friendly, CRM send-outs can rack up a high carbon footprint. One email produces on average 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide, and globally, 62 trillion spam emails were sent, equating to 1.86 million tonnes of CO2 each year.
The Solution
To avoid intrusive marketing, businesses should take the time to understand their customers and offer them relevant marketing material. It’s essential to look deeper into the data you have about who they are, how they buy, and what they want. If the message is met by an Unsubscribe request, the cost to speak to this customer via a different channel will increase substantially. By taking a little extra time to understand these things, businesses can avoid deluging the public with spam and instead offer them insightful, unique, and relevant marketing material.
Conclusion
Marketing can harm your business if it becomes intrusive. It’s important to consider the social, business, and environmental costs of overzealous marketing. By offering relevant marketing material and understanding your customers’ needs, businesses can avoid damaging their brand image and build a positive reputation. It’s time to move away from intrusive marketing and focus on providing value to customers.
