| Yes, you are right. My tone is off. Sorry about that. May you explain where I lose the plot? I'd like to clear it up in a manner that is beneficial to all. I'm constantly getting hate mail for being a marketing/sales/copywriting consultant. Every post here usually gathers me some nice hate mail from other members. Not meant to you personally. I apologize if that came out wrong. --- Thank you for the edited response. That is actually my point. Though you write it in a better manner. Sorry for the miscommunication. I'm tired from coding all day (its almost 1AM and Im not done), and do get stupidly cranky. Apologies. --- The stir it part refers to how some marketers hack growth. I personally don't use such techniques because it can easily backfire. My personal opinion is that some big startups that have enjoyed quick growth have used such manner. But I think that is another thread altogether. Experience has taught me that even when we make business mistakes we can still profit. In fact, a lot of growth can come out of such situation if it is handled correctly. My example above is not so good. Let me usea better another one. Startup A manages to get into some hot water by wronging a customer. The issue is that a credit card charge was improperly handled, and they did not take care of the customer as they should have. The customer writes a blog post venting about how frustrated he/she is. The blog post goes viral. Startup A contacts the customer, fixes the issue by calming the person with gifts and apologies. Then they go and make the press release explaining what happened. They scold their stupidty publicly, and show how they fixed it. Then they have the customer give faith that all is now good. Some days pass, and Startup A makes a new blog post explaining the new measures they are using against improperly handled credit card charges. In the blog post, they include a comprehensive tutorial on how to properly handle credit card charges for other startups. It goes viral, because it is showing the human side of the company. After that, the startup creates a special offer and markets it to its new audience. People make notice of how "well" all was handled and say "let's give them a chance" and order. Startup A managed to turn a blunder into a marketing opportunity. I have personally seen businesses go from broke to gold mine by using such tactic. |
I guess, if I were to pinpoint, it would be with the words 'stir it'.
BTW, I neither deserve nor need an apology from you. Don't be sorry! We're just disagreeing. And I really do think we have a fundamental disagreement about priorities here. Apologising doesn't resolve that (though I acknowledge I haven't articulated my side of it very well).
I don't know why someone would send you hatemail over you expressing an opinion. That doesn't sound right at all.
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> People make notice of how "well" all was handled and say "let's give them a chance" and order.
I think that's fine in cases where the 'mistake' clearly (or with reasonable doubt) was an actual mistake. This applies to outages, billing issues, product quality issues... Hounding on Twitter, not so much.
> I personally don't use such techniques because it can easily backfire.
I think if the reasons why they backfire were more important to businesses than the fact that they backfire, everyone would be a lot happier.