When you shake an apple tree, you’re expecting to catch apples. In this case, the apples are leads, sales or whatever you’re chasing with your tactics.
Having run an agency for the greater part of thirty years, I get what at times is an intimate look at the inner workings of many businesses.
Invariably, it comes as part of a desire to fix what isn’t working with their ‘marketing’.
I highlight that term because I don’t agree with the broad use of it when what is really being described are marketing tactics or, mostly, advertising.
Much of our work is on what I consider the primary digital asset: their website (s).
We collaborate with a variety of other agencies and in-house teams who are frantically shaking their apple trees to get more apples to drop into their hands.
And I watch with awe with those tactical teams that can shake like the best harvesters in the world. Fruit begins to drop, sometimes on the parts my team can control, but also through other channels we don’t; digital and analogue.
The holy grail — more apples. A veritable flood of apples at times, although I suspect there’s a better term for it than flood.
And what do you know? In a large number of cases, what existed in your organisation before, the process/system rot, which only got a tiny polish in the ‘marketing’ rejuvenation, still doesn’t deliver.
- “What’s gone wrong?”
- “The metrics show we’re not converting”
- “We need to change out our ad team”
- “Our <insert provider/campaign/idea> is at fault. Why do we keep blowing so much for poor results?”
This is where the real problems begin to surface, and only mature thinking business executives have the chops to handle the underlying truths.
Everyone else sees worms in the apples being caught, bugs and disease on the tree, but never the hands holding the apple, or where the apple goes after that.
Your client, a fruit you get to enjoy, as long as you pluck it at the right time, eat it when it’s ripe and appreciate it for what it is.
It’s a disappointed person that bites into an apple still hard from cold storage, expecting the taste of a peach.
Real marketing begins long before you even look at which tree to shake. Sometimes it’s done on the fly, but mostly it’s done to properly solve the problem.
At the very seed of the idea, those businesses look at all the factors.
- What type of apple do they really want/need
- Where to place or locate the tree
- How to water and nurture that tree
- How long and under what conditions does it take to fruit and ripen
- When should harvesting take place
Some might call this research, study, and developed market experience…. Call it what you will, but throwing $20,000, $500,000 or $1 million into an orchard before you know that it is no different than heading to the casino dressed like a winner. 99% of the time (invented statistics), you’ll come out with only your shirt.
Equally important, and what I see more often, are the companies that fly the flag of “customer service” and “exceptional experience”, but when undertaken by the real customer, they deliver nothing of the sort.
And then come more problems. THe organisation, with shoddy systems to begin with, hates dealing with complaints.
These companies have strong legal defences, but would be much better placed to fix the problem first.
Too often, ‘the apples’ are treated as if they’re stones; objects to be tossed around, able to withstand anything and unable to be anything other than a dull participant.
But our apples (customers, in case you got lost) realise their role. They are part of the process willingly and are happy to hand over their fruitiness (money) when things follow the natural order.
They don’t want to be taken too early, hidden in a dark, cold, unfriendly place for long periods, then sprayed with fake elements to force them to become ripe, only to end up in the hands of someone ungrateful for them not being what they wanted or them going rotten too quickly.
Handling a lead is no more or less important than handling a sale. Each is a stage in the readiness of that fruit.
Forcing it into your hands at the wrong time (for them or you) always leads to disappointment.
Weirdly, or perhaps it’s not so weird at all, when businesses analyse the bejesus out of every step in their processes from first touch to steps months after the service or product was delivered, and make them right, suddenly they don’t need to shake so many trees.
Read Raving Fans as a simple introduction to understanding how to run your business service delivery better.
You don’t need fancy catch phrases and internal hoo-rah to get this right. But what you do need is to get out of your own head and see things from a customer’s perspective.
“You can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle.”
Every person you treat brilliantly, follow up methodically, with gloved hands, real thought and in your brand’s best way, will shake the tree for you. In many cases you won’t even need to ask them to do it.
It’s a lot like how real viral content happens, not because of forced attempts, but because that piece, at that time, for those people, just nailed it.
Figure out your best fruit and how it needs to be handled, and you’ll get to share jointly in the fruit.
At ireckon digital that’s why we don’t just look at your website in isolation; we spend the time working with our clients on all steps in the equation. The end result? We find out what’s actually needed, then build it properly.
That’s what ireckon, what do you reckon?
Pro tip: if you need contracts, stopping negative reviews, or spend more time on defence, maybe you shouldn’t be in that orchard.
