Days like today make me nervous. It seems like just before any holiday traffic on our website goes down the drain. No matter what I try it just doesn't seem to get people to buy.
Monday was a good sales day, we received 6 orders and things were looking great, then Tuesday came along and now day three of no sales and I get start to get anxious.
The unknown sucks. Sometimes it seems like getting a steady 40 hour 9 to 5 would make life so much easier. But then I remember that everyone is out of work and that even working for someone else doesn't guarantee shelter from the unknown. So I continue to cling to the belief that as long as I put one foot in front of the other and try something new each and every day all of my hard work is worth something and one day it will all come together.... won't it?
Reflecting on everything we've tried over the last three years to get the product noticed makes me wonder if there is anything left. In year one we were pretty green, so I chalk that up to a year of learning the ropes.
There were a couple of rookie moves that really stand out. The first came when I tried to drum up some interest in the RocLok by posting a comment on a bloggers article about being locked outside. What's the big deal right? Well, me in my infinite wisdom thought, "no one wants to be sold to so why not post as a customer who loves the product instead?" FAIL! The blogger researched my email address which wasn't tied to the business but once she figured out my name game over. She was pissed. I tried to explain my thought process but she wasn't having any of it. To her I was just a low life spamming and lying to her audience. I really, deeply did not intend to cause any harm. I just didn't know what the best approach was, I tried and failed. Thankfully the blogger simply deleted my comment rather than lashing out on my actions publicly, I thank my lucky stars for that.
After that crash and burn, I went for the more direct approach and decided to post an article of my own on a local news community board. It was a great article outlining the reasons parents should hide a key for their school aged children. I was very proud of it. As a graphic designer, I wanted to add a photo so I purchased a stock image and submitted both for all of Portland to read.
I'd been following this community page for a while and was well aware that people can get for lack of a better word bitchy. But I'd seen some local vendors post before with good feedback so I thought I'd give it ago. I never expected what was to come. The first poster borated me for spamming on a community page, told me that this was a place for real news. I decided to defend myself, letting her know that it was real news, my life’s news. Her retort, trying to sell fancy rocks is not news, I'd like to throw that rock into the face of the woman in that photo. Enough said. Without haste I wrote the news station to have my posting removed as there was no self post removal button. Probably a cowardly move, but admittedly I'm not one for having the thickest skin in the face of conflict.
After those two extremely humbling experiences I became more cautious on what and where I posted but I never gave up. Instead I read up. Learned everything I could about the good and bad ways to tell the world about my product. I guess the biggest mistake I made was naively thinking that because McDonalds can get away with spamming the world, telling everyone about my little product the same way wouldn't hurt. What I've come to realize is that McDonalds probably gets as much bad feedback from their advertising as I did, but because they are millions of times larger than I am that 1% doesn't affect them. A small business can't afford any negative in the beginning unless that negative is so monumental it sparks a frenzy of media attention which really wasn't the way I wanted to start things off.
It really is hard to draw a line in marketing. Whether it's yourself or a product you created, taking the personal feelings out of the equation is next to impossible. To this day whenever I here a negative comment about the RocLok it hurts. It's like going up to someone and telling them they have an ugly baby. At tradeshows I'm always amazed that more people have something negative to say than positive. Instead of listening to what the vendor has to say we are all programmed to think the worst first. I'm guilty of it too. We don't like to be sold to and companies have sold to us for so long we don't trust anything any of them say anymore. It's kind of sad and it makes it that much harder for us little guys to get a word in.
No comments:
Post a Comment