Quick thought …. Would you walk up to a stranger on the street and launch in to a diatribe about your product? As you sit on the bus or subway, would you nudge the man next to you and try to engage him in a conversation about the benefits of your offerings? If you got an e-mail from a friend with some cc’d e-mail addresses of people you hardly know, would you e-mail each of them personally to introduce them to your services?
In each case, the answer is certainly “no” (unless you have no boundaries and sense of self-awareness, which would make you perfect for sales … oooh, that was mean.) So if it’s not okay to importune yourself with these people individually, then why is it okay to market your brand to them in the same fashion? Our mass communications have set an unfortunate precident of making it not just permissable but laudable to market to strangers in any method possible to increase revenues. And the returns on push marketing are starting to either flatten or decline for the same reason that you wouldn’t interrupt a stranger’s day. Nobody likes a pest; figure out how to get introduced and make them your friend before you pitch them.
