Make,amp,#39,Buy,Miserable,Thi marketing Make 'em Buy or Make 'em Miserable!
Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie
This weekend I watched a program on television called - I kidyou not - "Buyology". This show is about marketing and salesof products in the free world. I found the show utterly andcompletely fascinating -- not because I'm a web marketer, butbecause it seemed entirely like science fiction, or justplain fiction.It seems there are people out there who spend their workdaysstudying "consumer behavior" and how to influence that behaviorwithout our conscious participation and knowledge! As a searchengine optimizer, my job is to make small business web sitesrank well in search results at the major search engines. Thegoal of that activity is to attract online buyers of my clients'products to their web site. Fortunately, that's where my jobends and the web site takes over. I generate traffic and thesite supposedly generates sales.In the real world though, there are people dedicating theirprofessional lives to making certain that consumers not onlypurchase specific brands, but fall in love with those brands,entice them to buy those brands next time, and indeed to feelthey can't survive without those products! The program showeda "marketing anthropologist" following a woman through the grocery store observing her buying habits and asking questionsabout the purchases made.This woman bought Cascade dishwashing detergent exclusively ina specific size package. When she discovered that size of theproduct missing from the shelf in the supermarket, she couldn'tbring herself to buy the larger box, or -- GASP! -- to switchbrands so she could get that same size box! Asked why, she said,"I've always bought that brand in that size, I grew up with it!"This is the ultimate customer as long as Cascade doesn't changethe size of that box or alter their packaging. Maybe it's a guything, but I honestly don't get it! SudsyDish liquid works too.Now I'll be the first to recommend changes to a web site if Ibelieve it unlikely to sell products once I generate sufficienttraffic for a client because the "buy now" button is misplacedor because the site seems unprofessional. Thank goodness thoughthat I don't find myself studying consumer behavior to determinebrand awareness or loyalty! I admit that server log files andtraffic analysis software serve similar purposes online and canbe used to determine visitor paths through the site and tell howthey searched keywords to make their way to a client web site.CRM software makes similar attempts to categorize and studyconsumer behavior but I find it creepy that there are consumerspies viewing my shopping behavior in the department store viasecurity cameras as the Buyology TV program showed me. Sessioncookies do the same thing online but I can tell my browser notto accept them. My favorite online humor site is calledfuturefeedforward and they offered a wonderful column thisweek, "Wal-mart Tags Shoppers with Subcutaneous Cookies" fromthe year 2009. View the story at http://futurefeedforward.comThere's another article, "Ad Pox Cured by Branded Products"at FutureFeedForward that suggests a solution for brandedproduct loyalty guarantees. Consumers will become ill if theycan't get their beloved brands and are rapidly cured once theproduct is purchased again. In other words, "Make Them Buy Itor Make Them Miserable!" This comes to us in the year 2064. Gaining search engine visibility for small business web sitesseems so much nobler, (ahem!) than selling cigarettes to teenswith cartoony camels and determining consumer behavior whilespying on them with video cameras in the isles of supermarkets.I think we actually enjoy far more privacy online than we doin the real world. My job is to get people to visit clientweb sites. I'll leave it to the consumer anthropologists tofigure out how to make them buy once they get there. Sheesh! Article Tags: Make #39;em, Consumer Behavior, Make Them
Make,amp,#39,Buy,Miserable,Thi