Saturday, November 19, 2005
How to Ambush Your Customers and Make Them Happy
When's the last time you ambushed prospective customers? "Ambush? Me? Never! You can't do that to customers. You'll drive them away!" Yet I tell you that it is possible to ambush them and have them glad that you did.
I'm not talking about ambushing them in the sense of lying in wait for the purpose of doing them harm. I agree, that wouldn't make them very happy at all. What I'm talking about is coming at them from a direction they don't expect. Done right, they'll be thrilled that you jumped out at them unexpectedly.
One of the greatest hungers that people have is the hunger for something different. From the little baby pitter-pattering its little palms across the floor as it explores the rugged wilderness of its living room to the grown man or woman saving up for an expensive trip of a lifetime, we crave to experience something new and refreshing in life.
So if people all crave something new, why do we, as marketers, try to convince them of the value of what we're selling by writing the most mundane, cliched sales copy? You know, the kind that drones on in emotionless recitation of dry facts about our products?
They've seen that kind of stuff many times before and it really motivates them... to doze off.
Take, on the other hand, one marketer who chose to take a different approach. Not long ago, a 21-year-old college student got the idea to create a one-page website and sell advertising space on it. But instead of approaching businesses and asking them to buy, he took a different approach. He announced he was going to sell his marketing space by the pixel.
Pixels, by the way, are the extremely tiny dots on your computer screen that make up the words or images on it. Each image, each word on your screen, is made up of many of these dots, each one colored so that, all together, they form the images or words that you see.
It dawned on him that an average computer screen has nearly a million pixels, so he announced he was going to create a webpage that contained exactly 1 million pixels and sell advertising for $1 per pixel. He calls his project "The Million Dollar Home Page." The idea is so unusual that he's already sold over 620,000 pixels at $1 each. People are falling all over themselves to buy tiny 10 pixel x 10 pixel blocks for $100. And he's doing interviews all over the world about his unique idea.
Now before you get the idea to do the same thing, be aware that there are already plenty of copycats out there and none of them are having anywhere near the success he is. But the point is, when you do something in a way that sets the expected way of doing things on its ear, it gets people's attention.
It delights them because it's so unexpected. And it disarms their natural skepticism. People who wouldn't consider buying advertising space are jumping on this site because it's cool. People who would never go to a site that is nothing but ads are going there in droves because it aroses their curiosity.
It ambushes them with something they never expected. And they're delighted about it.
Don't let your writing sink into a rut. Have the courage to look at people's expectations of your product in a cockeyed way. You might just find a way to ambush them with delight.
Jeff
When's the last time you ambushed prospective customers? "Ambush? Me? Never! You can't do that to customers. You'll drive them away!" Yet I tell you that it is possible to ambush them and have them glad that you did.
I'm not talking about ambushing them in the sense of lying in wait for the purpose of doing them harm. I agree, that wouldn't make them very happy at all. What I'm talking about is coming at them from a direction they don't expect. Done right, they'll be thrilled that you jumped out at them unexpectedly.
One of the greatest hungers that people have is the hunger for something different. From the little baby pitter-pattering its little palms across the floor as it explores the rugged wilderness of its living room to the grown man or woman saving up for an expensive trip of a lifetime, we crave to experience something new and refreshing in life.
So if people all crave something new, why do we, as marketers, try to convince them of the value of what we're selling by writing the most mundane, cliched sales copy? You know, the kind that drones on in emotionless recitation of dry facts about our products?
They've seen that kind of stuff many times before and it really motivates them... to doze off.
Take, on the other hand, one marketer who chose to take a different approach. Not long ago, a 21-year-old college student got the idea to create a one-page website and sell advertising space on it. But instead of approaching businesses and asking them to buy, he took a different approach. He announced he was going to sell his marketing space by the pixel.
Pixels, by the way, are the extremely tiny dots on your computer screen that make up the words or images on it. Each image, each word on your screen, is made up of many of these dots, each one colored so that, all together, they form the images or words that you see.
It dawned on him that an average computer screen has nearly a million pixels, so he announced he was going to create a webpage that contained exactly 1 million pixels and sell advertising for $1 per pixel. He calls his project "The Million Dollar Home Page." The idea is so unusual that he's already sold over 620,000 pixels at $1 each. People are falling all over themselves to buy tiny 10 pixel x 10 pixel blocks for $100. And he's doing interviews all over the world about his unique idea.
Now before you get the idea to do the same thing, be aware that there are already plenty of copycats out there and none of them are having anywhere near the success he is. But the point is, when you do something in a way that sets the expected way of doing things on its ear, it gets people's attention.
It delights them because it's so unexpected. And it disarms their natural skepticism. People who wouldn't consider buying advertising space are jumping on this site because it's cool. People who would never go to a site that is nothing but ads are going there in droves because it aroses their curiosity.
It ambushes them with something they never expected. And they're delighted about it.
Don't let your writing sink into a rut. Have the courage to look at people's expectations of your product in a cockeyed way. You might just find a way to ambush them with delight.
Jeff
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