Most people think the opposite of love is hate, but really it isn’t, and I think most people know this if they take the time to think about it. If people love your products, you do great. If you have a group of people who hate your products, you are still likely to do OK. Take for example the iPhone. People love it because Apple somehow convinced many of us of its greatness. Then there are those who hate it (see iPhone4 vs. HTC Evo YouTube video) and it still does great and its main competitor the Android phone is doing well because people love it. They just spread the word in a less visible/audible way. Another example is twitter or facebook. Some people love them and others think they are a complete waste of freaking time, but they are both doing well from an adoption if not a profitability standpoint.
The same is true of people. Some people love Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) and some hate him for his megalomaniac ways. More often than not people apparently hate Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle) but they still keep buying Oracle products. Some people love president Barack Obama but some hate him for the change he represents and for his sometimes questionable political decisions. The same goes for Rush Limbaugh and former president Bill Clinton for his promiscuous way. Everyone seemed to love Lady Diana and despise Prince Charles because he loved another woman not nearly as beautiful and sweet as Lady Di. The vast majority of people adored Mother Theresa and Gandhi. Some people love hard rock or country music and some can’t stand either. So the products, people, and genre’s that people don’t care about are the one’s that no one gets emotionally charged about either way, and they disappear or have a very small niche.
So the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. What kind of company, product, person are you or do you represent? One that people love or hate? Do they not care enough to pay attention? Do they care if you throw your products into the sea or a landfill? Do they care if you throw yourself into the sea or a landfill? Will they notice if you walk out the door? If they don’t care and you are feeling like furniture (song lyric alert), then maybe it’s time to build another product, start/join another company, transform yourself so people notice you/your products, change your life situation, and/or buy new furniture! All of these things are much easier said than done except, of course, for ‘buying new furniture.’
I have sometimes wondered how a fad is created. In the tech/web world, there is all this talk about ‘viral’ this and ‘viral’ that about creating a gimmick that will cause adoption of your products/services to suddenly go through the roof. Us consumers are fickle and trying to predict what we will like in a mass scale is much more art & luck than science from my viewpoint.
My kids came home after a birthday party with these little plastic toys that mostly look like junk and a waste of petroleum based products to me. I asked them what they wanted to do with them and if I should recycle them or throw them away, but they both were like ‘no way, we need those!‘ Of course need and want in a child’s mind is the same thing. My son then proceeded to take them and line them up on top of the TV. For some reason I thought his enthusiasm and interest in doing something with them was cute so now they adorn the top of the TV and will probably be there for quite some time because that’s where they ‘need‘ to be. I have to admit that I smile when I see them mostly because in my mind I see his excitement of finding a place for them that made sense to him, and I remember him smiling while he was putting them up there. (See photos of these little toys to the left and right in this post.)
They are also into these things called Silly Bandz, which are basically colored rubber bands in all sorts of different shapes and sizes (e.g., dinosaurs, sea animals, princesses, pets, etc.). I don’t know where they first got them but my son just showed up with them one day and said he got them from a friend. I think their dad bought them a bunch more. My son is pretty good at getting more of them but my daughter ends up giving hers away to other kids and then gets upset and wants more from her brother.
They both have seemingly opposite ways of dealing with these things. I remember my son would come home with a bunch of Pokemon cards, and I’d ask him where he got them. He would say “they gave them to me.“ I would ask him who gave them to him and he would say some friends at school. I would then ask him what he gave them and he said “nothing.” I said how can that be that they just gave you these and you didn’t give them anything and he said “I dunno, they just wanted to give them to me.“ I was perplexed at that but I really couldn’t ask him anything else because I know that he gets along well with other kids. I find myself wondering if this is a talent of his I should encourage or not! Now my daughter is the one who wants to give her things to people and I’ve seen her give things to her brother when he asks, but I’ve also seen him give her stuff when she asks. If someone likes her Silly Bandz and asks her for them she’ll gladly give them away, but I don’t think she really wants too but feels she has to because later (as I mentioned) she will go try to get some from her brother because she thinks it’s unfair that he now has more than she does. I try to explain to her (she’s only 5) that it’s not her brother’s fault that she has less but she doesn’t get that and then eventually her brother will let her have a few of the ones he doesn’t want. The end result is that I’ve decided they can’t take the Silly Bandz to summer camp. We’ll see how long that lasts.
So I wonder how these fads are created and I wonder when these particular ones will subside. Us humans ebb and flow in our desire for things whether they be big, life changing things or silly things like rubber bands in the shape of a dolphin.
Brian Clark at Copyblogger did a post recently called How to Tell the Truth that was just spot on. I LOVED it because it is so true. It’s a short post and I was trying to think about how to summarize it, but I just can’t because it’s so perfect. So I hope Brian doesn’t get upset with me for quoting it verbatim here:
“Everyone wants the truth, right?
Ask your spouse or your boss or your employees or your customers… they’ll tell you all they want is the truth.
But that’s a lie.
We hate the truth. Our reaction to real truth is hostility and fear.
Do we really want to hear the truth about why we’re fat, or why we’re broke, or why our kids are under-achieving? Tough stuff to process for most.
And yet telling the simple raw truth is one of the most effective attention and persuasion tactics available. Especially these days, with people sick to death of being lied to and betrayed.
But if people reject what you say, truth or not, you’re back where you started.
Guys like Buddha and Jesus had this problem.
The solution remains the same.
Tell a story.”
I sent the post to my friend, Robb Lanum (a screen writer), and he liked it too and added “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
My big problem is that I have a tendency to tell the truth good or bad, and I don’t always have a great story behind it. It usually turns out great if the truth is good (e.g., our product is awesome and will save your life, you look great, you did a fabulous job) but if the truth is not so good (e.g., our product is good but you need to have xyz to make it work, I screwed up, you screwed up) it’s hard to recover. Sometimes I wish I could keep my mouth shut but fear, Southern Baptist guilt, and feeling like I should do and say the right thing (because I would want to hear the truth) usually overcome me. A strong conscience sucks to deal with sometimes, but I selfishly hope my kids inherit it without having to feel the hell, fire, and brimstone in their minds!
This is probably one of the reasons why I’ll never be a great classical marketer. As Seth Godin recently wrote in a post called Is Marketing Evil?, the best marketers know how to create a great story about their companies and products and then they know how to get it out to the universe (usually with a reasonable budget!). He ends the post with:
“Just because you can market something doesn’t mean you should. You’ve got the power, so you’re responsible, regardless of what your boss tells you to do.
The good news is that I’m not in charge of what’s evil and what’s not. You, your customers and their neighbors are. The even better news is that ethical, public marketing will eventually defeat the kind that depends on the shadows. Just ask Bernie Madoff.”
So ‘eventually‘ with any luck my tendency to tell the truth will keep me out of jail. Now I just have to learn how to spin a fairytale captivating story! Here’s a video clip of “A Few Good Men” starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson that shows how most people can’t handle the truth…most notably the one (Jack) telling the truth:
We recently finished our first ever marketing survey for Babble Soft. And we announced the winners on our blog on a post called Babble Soft Survey Winners (yes, I get points for coming up with such an original title!). Should I have done one earlier? Yes, of course. But what one should do and what one does in an entrepreneurial endeavor don’t always match up…especially when you are doing the business on your own (before I found Nicole Johnson), part time, and/or after hours. The process went smoothly enough, I learned a few things, and of course I love sharing with fellow entrepreneurs so here it goes…
We first decided we needed to do a quarterly newsletter to our existing users and announce the survey there. We used Vertical Response to deliver our newsletter because between them and the leading competitor, Aweber, they were the only one who offered ‘pay as you go’ emailing. Since we only plan to send a newsletter once per quarter, we felt it would be better to pay by the email address instead of signing up for a monthly ongoing service which we wouldn’t end up using 8 out of the 12 months of the year. I posted the newsletter on this blog and on our new Babble Soft blog where we emphasized the great prizes people would win for filling out the survey that we created on the fabulous free survey tool called Survey Monkey. We only had 10 questions so we were able to use their free services which I have to say is pretty darn cool. If I ever had a need to do a more sophisticated survey, I would definitely pay to use their service. It’s pretty easy to analyze the results.
We received a good response rate but because we also published the link to the survey on what we thought would be a good competition sites for parents, we had quite a few people who filled out the survey who had never used our applications or had even heard of us. On one hand, it was good additional exposure, but on the other hand, I don’t think it ended up being from the right crowd of people. However, we did get some good data from existing users and new parents that affirmed some of our current product development decisions. Overall, I was amazed at how many people are out there who spend their time trying to win prizes! I was also amazed at how some people didn’t really care who you were, they just wanted their prize.
Key Takeaways
It’s a good idea to do a short survey (7 to 10 minutes to complete) from time to time. Offering prizes guarantees more responses but not necessarily the right responses.
Have some independent people review your survey to make sure it’s understandable. We had a few people review it and it helped us word our survey more effectively.
Using cost-effective or free tools like Vertical Response and Survey Monkey will make your life easier.
Be really careful where you publicize your survey because if you don’t it’s highly likely you’ll end up with some yahoo’s (i.e., those out for a quick buck) answering your survey. Then you’ll have to give prizes to people who really have no idea what you do. It’s kind of painful actually…especially when it’s your company and products that you’ve created from scratch.
Don’t do a ‘random winner’ selection. We did a ‘random winner’ contest. This may cut down on the quantity of people who complete the survey, but if you can figure out a way to select people who have either used your products or would have been great potential users or end up giving you wonderful feedback, you’ll feel much better. I’m guessing the quality of responses might increase even if the quantity decreases.
Make sure to follow up with the people who respond by informing them of who won and where to see the results. It can result in additional exposure.
I don’t have a 7th takeaway but I like the #7 so if you read this far, thank you. Plus, I’m annoyed that although I have selected the number button in WordPress when creating this list, it’s displaying bullets in both Firefox and IE. So you’ll just have to take my word (or count) that this is the 7th takeaway!
We have identified some key users from our survey who we have either engaged with or will engage with to help us with some internet marketing. This will be a new experience for both Nicole and myself since we will be taking a little bit of a risk because most of our users are not traditional internet marketers…which I’m crossing my fingers that will end up being a good thing!
If you have any experience with marketing survey’s please share your discoveries in the comment section below.
