The customer is not a moron

Marketing trends 2023

The customer is not a moron. She is your wife.
David Ogilvy Tweet

This is what the marketing genius David Ogilvy taught in the 1950s. The advertisement in his time was dull and stupid and too openly salesy. Then he changed the world of marketing forever. Yet, sometimes I feel like marketers in the online world should revise the basics. Not the basics fot the marketing trends in 2023 but the evegreen.

Is the deal real?

See for yourself. Open your mailbox. Do you see an email that promises a 5% sale if you spend 300 dollars on stuff you don´t need? Why do they believe it will work? Nobody wakes up in the morning with a desire to spend their money. A 5% sale can nudge me toward the deal when I see a product I buy regularly. But if I do not plan on buying new skis, I cannot imagine how a deal like this could move me.

Too many deals nowadays look like this:

They wanted to provide some deals but were scared to lose too much.
They intended to give a discount but wanted as few people as possible to use it.

Sometimes the only way is to answer a fundamental question. Is the customer an idiot or a human being like me? And if he is a human being, why do I treat him like an idiot? Why try on him tricks that I know would not work on me?

Quick! There will be no sale tomorrow.

I know about the psychological principle of scarcity. The scarcer the stuff, the more interested we are. If we believe there might be insufficiency, we are inclined to buy it. Even if we did not consider the purchase before. But, hey, that still does not make us idiots. We still use our brains. The customer may not know the psychology behind the scarcity principle, but he has seen it before. The sales end “tomorrow,” while “tomorrow” never comes. The last place on a webinar, the last bottle in the cellar.

Sure, some rare pieces won´t be available if we do not act quickly. And there are shows with tickets sold long before the date. But the customer is so used to this principle every day on the Internet that he is very suspicious about it. And when he sees through your trick, you lose their trust. There is nothing worst on the market than to lose their trust.

Let us do some things they say we should.

Entrepreneurs and business people educate themselves. They usually understand that they should. But too often do I see the results going only halfway. As if they were thinking:

They said we should send people emails. So, we send them emails once a week.
They said we should have a blog. So, we publish some blog posts sometimes.
Everybody should be on social media. So, we have our account.
I heard about SEO, so I renamed some of my pages.

Indeed, you can think of other examples. What strikes me most is the lack of empathy. The customer on the other side of the line is not a robot that reacts according to the textbook. It is a living and breathing being. And a thinking being. So, email marketing won´t work just because somebody said it would.

Ask yourselves. Would the emails you send your customers have any effect on you? No? So, why should they have any impact whatsoever on your client? And your blog posts, would you spend time reading them? No? Why do you expect anyone else to do so?

Half measures are the worst time investment you can make. It is better not to do it than to do it wrong because the time you spend writing terrible emails with no effect could be consumed by improving your business or spending quality time with your family. What to do, then? Focus on one thing you can do or hire an expert on things you cannot do well. You do not have to do it all to be on every channel and post daily. Don´t overreach yourself. And sometimes, it is better to do it the old way than to try something new when you do not have the skill and time to learn.

Because the customer really is not a moron. They really hate being treated like one. And for 2023, it will be more accurate than ever because we are fed up with lousy marketing. We see it everywhere. My advice for marketing trends in 2023?

Build a relationship with your customers. That is the cheapest and most successful strategy.
Don´t try to do it all. Do what works for you and your customers. No, you do not create a Tik Tok channel if you sell hearing aids to elderly people. Even if they say that Tik Tok is the future.

And most of all, stop seeing your customers as moneybags. See them as the people they are. They will know it and appreciate it. And your purse will appreciate it in the long run as well.