Martketing is a conversation. Everyone focuses on attention. But what about intention marketing?
You know, where people are ready to buy. They just want to find you. What you have. How much? And how easy you are to do business. But instead we build nice white papers, flashy web sites. Pour over those analytic reports.
Do you have the "I want it" button? And it works?
A good example is Travelocity. When I want to rent a car, I tell them when and where and they show me a bunch of companies with different cars. I click, I'm done. They get my money.
On the other end of the spectrum is the healthcare industry. I want to buy a small business group policy. Now. So Blue Cross Blue Shield's telemarketing calls me up 3 weeks ago. First time ever I get a call for something I actually wanted. I tell them "yes". No one ever calls me back for a quote. So I call the sales department directly on Monday. Leave a phone message for a sales person. They never call back. So I call again today. Well since this is a Delaware Corporation with offices in Utah and California they cannot help me. Nope, they don't know anybody else in the industry.
Meanwhile on Tuesday I fill out a form requesting a call from Aetna. They promise to get back within 24 hours. What happened? Nothing. So I call them in Hartford. They give me a broker phone number. Not to find a broker, but to be a broker. Scratch Aetna.
Today I filled out a form for United Healthcare. Want to lay odds if they ever call?
But they all have nice looking websites.
Oh, now don't get me started! ;-)
Reminds me of when I tried to sign up for DSL with Qwest. The web site (purty as it was) didn't feel like taking my order that day. Called Qwest and after many minutes and transfers - the sales people couldn't sell me what I wanted since, "we don't know about the web offers and can't do them."
That's just sad.
Posted by: Mary Schmidt | 03 April 2006 at 10:28 AM