Best Practices, Blog
Marketing Lesson - How Not to Feed a Dead Fish
Each day I would feed our pet fish, Max. Max is a blue Betta fish.
The first point you should understand is that Max is my family’s first pet. My kids wanted a pet and since neither my wife nor I are exactly pet people, we decided we can handle an easy-to-maintain, starter fish like Max.
Since we got him about a year ago, I was in charge of feeding him and my wife was in charge of the inside of the tank - cleaning it, replacing the filter, etc. Yes, somehow I got the easier job.
So, I feed Max daily, rarely missing a feeding and if I ever did, I would make it up to him with a little extra next time. Sort of like my eating habits.
Over time I actually enjoyed the ritual of feeding Max. I’d like knowing my efforts are appreciated. Sometimes he’d realize the food was dropped in the fish tank and he’d immediately swim to the top of the fish tank and begin his feast. He seemed very happy and content (for a fish).
Since we got Max, I would feed him mostly in the mornings. Now with the combination of one, getting up early with the kids as my wife is already at work, and two, not really being a morning person, I could feed Max on autopilot mode in the morning - meaning not really paying close attention to his activities.
So this week was a bit hectic at Wauters World. We were running around with to-dos, appointments, kids’ activities, work and more. I was less focused on Max’s daily activities than normal, but I kept feeding him as usual.
Here It Comes, Can You Guess What Happened?
Yes, poor Max died. It was a bit sad for me. Although the kids didn’t shed any tears or even get upset. I definitely thought we’d have to go into the death discussion. But they didn’t get upset. This was surprising to me. In fact, they got more upset when On-Demand programming on our cable TV didn’t work the other night - we couldn’t watch the Power Puff girls for the 17th time.
So, our family pet was dead. It was time for me to take close look at Max and he didn’t look so good. I’ll spare you the details. The last time I saw him swimming around was two days ago, so I know his untimely death was recent. But in all the busyness and maniac mornings, I was feeding him all along.
Admittedly, I was feeding a dead fish for days. How embarrassing!
So, How Does This Apply to My Online Business And How I Can Learn How to Not Feed a Dead Fish?
I have shared this story with you to discuss several mistakes that most people make with their online businesses. So if you want to avoid feeding your own dead fish in your business, then you’ll want to avoid the following marketing mistakes:
1. Marketing to customers who don’t want your products.
For your customer acquisition efforts, you’ll want to avoid promoting value propositions (e.g. % off product line X) to customer segments not interested product X at any price.
So, if you are an online bakery showing your Google Adwords “brownie” ads to Google searches looking for brownie recipes, you’re likely not going to attract qualified customers.
If you were an online jeweler selling rings, you’ll want to avoid advertising on the term “onion rings”. Likely a bad match!
For customer retention efforts, you’ll want to avoid marketing products to customers that shouldn’t buy your products. Say you own an online shoe store and you’ve got a new Nike sneaker available in only certain sizes. The worst way to promote this product via email is to blast this message “New Nike Shoes Available at [Shoe Store Name]” to your email list. It’s even bad to segment your email list to only email “Nike Shoe Buyers.”
Why? The new Nike shoe in this example only is available in limited sizes. A better marketing approach is to segment by shoe size (or an adjacent shoe size since some people wear more than one shoe size depending on the brand/fit) and email just that list.
For a more targeted list and better marketing message, you can email just the Nike customers in that shoe size and promote the new Nike shoes are available in their size. Just do it (sorry, had to throw that in there…give me a break, I’m grieving!).
BOTTOM LINE - don’t feed a dead fish, they don’t want what you’ve got. So as retailers, don’t promote the wrong products to the wrong customers.
2. Going through your day-to-day business on autopilot
I could have avoided feeding a dead fish by paying closer attention to what I was doing and going into autopilot mode, where I pay attention to my activities as much as I should. Luckily, my wife noticed Max’s demise, which helped give me totally clarity to the situation.
Sometimes it takes someone else’s feedback or insight to have you notice something important. For retailers selling online, your web analytics can act as this person or feedback mechanism.
Often, what’s happening in your online business, where you are losing customers in your online store and which marketing efforts are giving your the best ROI (return on investment) are right in front of you in your analytics data. By overlooking your web analytics data, you are running your online business blindly.
We’re lucky to have some much usable data to help us make buying decisions. It’s a shame to ignore this incredible opportunity. Your brick and mortar counterparts could only dream of having this data.
Plus, instead of feeding the dead fish, which unfortunately at that point a bad use of time, I could have done other more effective work.
Think about this - when you are doing your day-to-day work, are you just doing busy work which fills up your day or are you actually doing work to improve your online business.
If you find most of your effort is on the busy work, then you need to make sure to implement the efforts that will keep the business moving forward!
BOTTOM LINE - To avoid feeding a dead fish, pay close attention to your efforts within your business. Often the busyness of day-to-day efforts can lead to ineffiicent use of your time and others.
Lessons from the Fish Bowl
Hopefully, you will take a moment to reflect on these important lessons from the passing of Max. Paying more attention to your marketing and day-to-day efforts within your business can bring new life to your online store. Consider this Max’s gift to you. It’s his legacy!
Swim in peace Max. I hope you’re enjoying the giant fish bowl in the sky!
Online Store A-FISH-ionado,
David
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Just wanted to say, I love this article and the object lesson. Sorry about poor Max.