When communication becomes too persistent
Communication may become so pushy and intrusive that the message is lost. This reminds me of a trip to Southern Europe years ago, where I ventured into a small souvenir shop with a much too zealous salesperson. “Special price for you, my friend”, he repeatedly insisted, while pulling one useless thing down from the shelf after the other. The harder he tried, the more desperate to get out, I grew.
Today, when experiencing the same aggressiveness on landing pages, I don’t hesitate a second to click “close”.
For years, I produced campaigns and content offering every contact opportunity on the planet from message in a bottle to QR codes. And looking back – I’m convinced that the only thing each piece of content was missing was a goal: One clear and unambiguous goal.
What is it I’m ultimately trying to achieve with each piece of content? Is it to convert leads to customers, excite existing customers, or is my goal to attract new leads? And which amount of new leads defines success – 100, 200, 300?
Close attention to what my goal is and where the customer is in his/her journey is the foundation to clear and engaging communication. Being highly relevant for a small clearly defined target group is much more effective than trying to be slightly relevant to everybody. If we know whom we are trying to attract, we can leave out most of the contact options. In the awareness phase, the user is not ready for a call, which in worst case would scare them off forever.
However trite, it seems to me that only few set clear goals for each piece of content: What’s the purpose, and is it actually worth the effort?
