Marketing Gone Wrong
Like the hamburger in the image above, false images of your products just don’t stand up in real life (pun intended). A friend told me that, in Japan, it’s against the law to use fake images. Pictures of food must look just like what your server puts on your table. Why does anyone try to fool customers? It’s beyond me. It must be beyond you.
False images, false claims – trust killers. You’ve heard it before, “People do business with people they like and trust.” Building trust can be difficult. A single misstep can break trust and lose customers. Many missteps can break a business.
A client a while ago had started a new business and ordered his product from a factory in another country. He had a beautiful marketing campaign and sold a surprising number of products. He called me to help him scale the business.
He had presold goods with a promise of delivery in six weeks. Nothing was delivered in six weeks. Some shipments did not happen for months. A significant number of the products, when they were finally delivered, malfunctioned.
Looking online, I saw scathing comments and threats of lawsuits. When I asked why he hadn’t replied to any of the emails, he said, “Yeah, the factory couldn’t meet the shipping dates. I don’t have time to answer emails. I’m too busy trying to fix the design and working with the factory.”
Initial emails that were polite had turned very nasty in some cases. This started with misleading images of the product and untested claims of its effectiveness. It started with his own trust in a factory that provided false images of their operation and false claims about their expertise. This went as wrong as wrong can be. It ended in bankruptcy.
The secret to customer satisfaction is to under promise and over deliver.
