Pick-Up Lines Don’t Work

While John is away, Skyon, a master marketing pick-up artist, will be sharing his provocative approach to attracting customers and earning transactions from them.

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Marketers have been trained to stalk their customer targets. They desperately try to attract the attention of customers at every turn. Customers continuously give companies the cold shoulder. They fast-forward past advertising with their DVR. They download AdBlockerPlus to eradicate online advertising that pops ups and under from websites. They ignore advertising signage on airline security trays. All of this ad creep and ad clutter are failed pick-up lines.

Customers reject pick-up lines from companies, just like women will reject pick-up lines from guys. Think about it, Pick-up lines don’t work. They might get a customer’s attention for a nano-second, which is just long enough for a customer to see through their play in order to reject their unwanted advances.

Consider the Super Bowl. Advertisers pay millions to throw a cheesy pick-up at customers. Sure, we might laugh at a Super Bowl ad but we have no recall of the brand … just the recall of us chuckling over the funny,

Marketers need to stop delivering clever pick-up lines to customers and instead, start building a connection with customers.

It is not enough for a customer to be attracted to a brand. The customer must become invested in the conversation because the more time a customer spends interacting with a brand, the more likely that customers will want to begin a transactional relationship.

My advice? Be playful, be challenging, and be unpredictably predictable.

Be a playful brand. Customers do not want their brands to take themselves too serious.

Be a challenging brand. Customers want to tango, they want a give and take relationship and not one-sided take relationship.

Be a predictably unpredictable brand. Customers are turned off by complacent brands. They value brands that are willing to take calculated risks.

Keeping a customer involved in a transactional relationship is an on-going process. You cannot keep a customer on-the-shelf and simply use them whenever you need a sale. No. Customers need attention, love, cuddling, etc.

Customers believe brands are an unlimited resource with new or different brands always entering in their consideration set. That’s why it is imperative for marketers to go beyond trying to capture attraction with shallow pick-up lines to building a connection through an on-going playful conversation.

** END OF PART FOUR **

Comments

[Dan Schawbel]

Care about what the customer has to say and then customize your offering or pitch to them.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Skyon, nice to read you. "Customers reject pick-up lines from companies, just like women will reject pick-up lines from guys." Esp. with those pick up lines turn out to be the same for every woman ;-)

[Brett]

Great post. I agree 100% that there needs to be some connection with the customer; otherwise, ad advertisement comes off cheap.

[KL]

Sounds great. Sounds vague.
Like all marketing instructors, Skylon pushes all the right philosophical buttons and divulges absolutely no practical information. Until he can break it down step by step with non-theoretical proofs, this ideal customer/brand relationship is just another illusion planted by a
blogging wanker.

[johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)]

KL ... Wanker, eh? Harsh dig at Skyon. This post by him is on the theoretical side but his other posts were more instructional. Give his other posts a read -- that is if you are more than a commenting wanker. (Ha.)

[Jeff Chavez]

I really appreciated this post on cutting out the cheesy talk when it come to marketing . It’s something that every entrepreneur should be aware of... we have a large subscriber base and we featured this post on our site under the sales & marketing category on our content site www.northstarthinktank.com. Thanks again for the useful information!

[KL]

a wanker is a professional at wasting other people's time. Skyon's not digging very deep and certainly not mining gold. Most laymen have been aware of these think-tank "ideas" for some 50 years now. Hey, Skyon, personify that challenging brand for us.

[PUA]

I think certainly lines can work and build branding, but the key is to be playful and push-pull with the end sale. Nobody likes being pushed into a sale.