Heed their feedback. It’s a warning.

Customers who complain are doing you a big favor. Instead of telling you that there is a problem, they could just go away mad—and tell all their friends.

Just because you have not encountered the problem yourself, that does not mean it is not real. It means that your interface, documentation, web design, or *something* is at fault, and you need to fix it.

And just because no one has complained before, that does not mean there has not been a problem all along.

Quit assuming that the customer is always wrong / stupid / lazy / dishonest. And even if you think that, do not let it show.

And the customer who is trying out a free service or product today (and complaining when it does not work as advertised) is not being “ungrateful.” Grow up! You’re in business.

That complaining, grouchy customer gave you a chance. They could have become your biggest fan. But you failed them.

Good marketers rise to the challenge, accept complaints as feedback, and make sure the customer is happy. That is how you keep customers and get new ones by referral. Sarcasm is not.

Sure, a grouchy customer could be just a mean person. Or they could be just having a bad day. And your product and/or inadequate service and support could just be the cause of that bad day.

So be nice. And pay attention. You could learn a lot.

Customers who speak up are valuable. And they are the tip of the problem iceberg. For every one who speaks up, there are lots more who simply leave in disgust—and tell their friends.

Think about it.

Defying marketing maxims about the difficulty of creating brand new markets for totally new products, Jobs has succeeded on a grand scale with products such as Apple II, Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone…

And lest anyone think his success with Apple Computer was just a fluke, when Jobs left, the company foundered. His return brought the company back to success. Clearly he knows what he is doing.

But Uncle Stevie’s latest brainchild strikes me as a mismarketed product. It is a great product. I believe there is a large market for a tablet computer with great Internet connectivity at a reasonable price. Yet the iPad tablet computer is being marketed as a phone!

Too big to carry in your pocket, and too expensive, vulnerable, and heavy to carry everywhere, the tablet seems likely to fail in the cell phone market for those reasons and a few more. I hope I am wrong, because I really want one—but not to use as a cell phone.

At least that’s my opinion. What’s yours?

Example of a well-designed book cover. Image via Wikipedia

Awhile back I wrote about how you can judge a book by its cover and the importance of book jacket design in selling books. (The same could be said for most packaging design.)

As an example I used a nameless series of novels that had become highly successful with classy covers and then switched to unprofessional and rather repulsive cover illustrations—apparently to save money.

Last week in the grocery store I noticed a book from that series with yet another a new cover design. The illustration was midway in competence between the original sharp designs and the subsequent bad ones. However, I think the publisher finally got it right.

The books are a bit more serious than the original designs were. As I explained before, a cover that does not match the contents can turn off the intended audience and attract people who will put the book right back down again when they flip through it and see what is actually about.

The new illustration is attractive enough and gives a better idea of the content and tone of the series. Yay!

Needless to say, I bought the book.

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Image via Wikipedia

Recently I wrote about how you can judge a book by its cover—and should be able to. At that time, I was talking about the appropriateness—or congruency—of the design to the topic.

(The Douglas Adams book on the left is an example of good design from a series that was well designed, well marketed, and highly successful, establishing a huge base of loyal fans and eager buyers.)

Today I want to talk about the recent trend to cheap, ugly art on book covers. It is really obvious in some of the genre book series I follow.

For example, a series of books starts out with classy covers that convey the true nature of the contents. The series becomes highly successful and profitable—perhaps not a best seller, but a solid income producer for the publisher, with a great future ahead as the series grows.

Then the publisher commissions poorly executed, even repellent art for the reprints. Does that make sense? Not to this former book publisher.

You see the real profit in publishing is in the reprints. The first edition of most books does not make much money. Between the advance to the author, the costs of printing and binding, and the huge discounts required by the major bookstore chains, publishers often do not break even on the first book in series.

But they know that as more books in the series are published, new readers will go back and read the earlier ones, and the market for the series begins to build. That is why you often see the first few books in a series in paperback only, then the series switches to hardcover with paperback reprints of the hardbacks about a year later.

If the series really catches fire, you sometimes see the earliest paperbacks reprinted as hardbacks for the die-hard fans who want a complete collection of hardbacks.

Now, if you are the publisher, reprinting the original books is just gravy. The editing, typesetting, book design, and art are all done. The book exists as negatives or printing plates that you can reprint cheaply, even piggybacking the print run with another book printing. Easy peasy.

What you, as a publisher, do not want at that stage is to redesign the cover of the book. That adds time, adds cost, and cuts into profits. So why do it? Ever?

One reason is if the cover art for some reason changed for the hardback series, and that was when book sales really took off. For example, if the series was never expected to be such a runaway hit, the original paperback covers might have been done by a low-price (and lesser quality artist). The new design may be selling a lot more books.

Or when the series unexpectedly takes off, and perhaps the audience proves to be a bit different from the expected one, a more expensive or more appropriate artist may be commissioned for the hardcover books—with great success. That seems to happen more with the many crossover genre books these days. Publishers and bookstores sometimes have a hard time classifying such books correctly as they guess what the most avid audience will be for the books.

Or when the book is made into a movie or a hit TV series, the publisher may want to capitalize on a new market of movie or TV fans. So the covers are changed to conform with the movie or TV series logo and ad designs.

A good example of that is the redesign and reprinting of the Charlaine Harris series about psychic waitress and vampire friend Sookie Stackhouse since the success of the TV series True Blood. Her bestselling books in that series have been reprinted with all new covers to appeal to TV series fans. That makes sense.

So it would be worth the expense to upgrade the cover quality to get more sales--or to change the whole look it to appeal to a new audience. But I am seeing the covers on reprints of successful books downgraded.

And here is the thing: I know for a fact that downgrading the covers from classy and sassy to cheap and tacky is costing them sales. I myself have skipped buying books in series I love because the cover illustration was so poorly drawn that it repels me.

I have been in publishing, advertising and marketing long enough to know that my taste in graphics is representative of the market as a whole. Bad packaging and/or ad design always reflects badly on the product.

I may not represent everyone, by my taste does conform to market trends pretty well. And unlike most consumers, I am aware of how the design, illustration and typography affect my reactions to products, including books.

So my question is this: Why would publishers spend the money do downgrade book covers from appealing to unappealing? What is going on here?

And with as many talented, aspiring artists as there are, why are major publishers using inept artists for something as important to sales as book covers?

If anyone knows what the deal is, would you please explain it to me?

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You not only can judge a book by its cover, you have to be able to—for the book to sell well. Think not?

Imagine a hard-boiled detective thriller with a fluffy, flowery romantic cover. You think anyone who is interested in hard-boiled thrillers will even pick it up? Of course not.

Now think of a sweet, old-fashioned romance (barely hints at sex, innocent till marriage…Do they still sell those?) with a garish, words-only cover. Do you think a young girl looking for a blissful escape from reality is going to give that book a glance? Not even one.

Worse, if the romance reader buys the thriller by mistake, or the nonfiction reader accidentally buys the fluffy romance, they will be extremely unsatisfied customers. Angry customers. They will blame the publisher for misrepresentation—and rightly so!

The point of the story is this: Make sure your advertising and packaging appeal to the right market, and that the product matches the presentation.

I promise you it is well worth the effort. And misrepresenting your product is never a good thing in the long run.

So why make it so that only those who have the latest, up-to-the-minute versions of software installed can watch it? When you do that, you lose a lot of potential customers!

Unless your video is demonstrating the latest special effects game, software, or movie, and your audience is young, affluent geekboys, you don’t need the latest version of Flash, released 5 minutes ago.

Today I received an email with a link to a video touting an Internet marketing product. From past experience with the seller, this will be a talking-head video. It will not need special effects. Five-year-old technology would work just fine.

Yet here I am with a less-than-one-year-old state-of-the-art laptop, and I can’t watch it because I don’t have Flash 10.1.01.1.1.1….whatever. In case it’s not obvious, that’s bad marketing.

(Yes, yes, I stopped work, closed all 25 browser windows and some other stuff, and installed it, but most people can’t or won’t bother to do that.)

Most people are not running the latest version of anything. If they are using their computer at work, they can’t. Most corporations deliberately stay at least a year behind the latest—and sometimes more—they want to wait for the bugs to be swatted and the security patches to be available before they update their software. It saves support costs. 

Corporate IT departments also set up the computers so that users cannot install anything not provided by IT. That also saves greatly on support costs.

And most people at home do not have the latest and greatest. Many do not even have the latest operating system. Like the big corporations, they may feel “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Or, no matter how intelligent and well educated, they may not want to get into PC maintenance.  You would be surprised how many affluent people just buy a new computer every two or three years—just like the big corporations they work for or with—instead of installing new software all the time. Adults are often using hand-me-downs from their high-school or college-age kids!

So if you eliminate everyone (even executives) using corporate computers (including laptops), everyone who is too busy/lazy to update software all the time, and also those who are using older computers and possibly cannot run the latest version of, say, Flash, you have just eliminated a huge percentage of potential customers—whatever your product. 

Is that smart? I don’t think so.

There’s a reason they call it “the bleeding edge.” You’re bleeding profits.

What I purely hate is when they call me. Calling can be a good marketing tool, but it should be used very, very rarely and wisely. Marketers who call to give me a sales pitch get a quick brush-off, especially if they got my phone number under false pretenses.

I never agree to calls. And I’m not very nice when people interrupt my day or evening with a phone call. 

On the other hand, an on-line marketing genius named Howie Schwartz calls frequently, and I welcome the calls. Why? He calls as a reminder of his webinars that I’ve signed up for.

Howie’s are automated calls, and they are truly helpful. I tend to get busy and forget webinars, and I find his really entertaining and useful.

Now if everyone else starts doing that, starts imitating Howie and calling me to bug me about their webinars, I will probably just unsubscribe from their lists. 

So the moral of this story is, “Don’t bug people.” If you manage to wangle someone’s phone number, treat it as golden. If they signed up for email from you, stick to that unless they give you permission to call—and unless you are truly doing them a service. 

You will sell a lot more products by respecting other people’s time and resources. 

And that’s all I have to say about that.

I’m not saying you have to give anyone anything. Far from it. You are in business. No one expects that.

But be honest about what you are offering. Whether it’s a forced-continuity membership or “low fee for shipping,” that is not free. If there are any strings attached that require payment, it is not free.

[Whether or not "free" actually applies to things you give in return for the site visitor narking on---I mean, giving you the email addresses of---his or her friends is another quibble for another day.]

If you are offering a gift with purchase (normally referred to in Internet marketing as “a bonus”), say so. Call it a bonus. Don’t pretend it is a gift.

All these little scams (and, Yes, they are scams on a small scale) are simply making me unsubscribe from your list and/or delete your mail without opening. Do you think I’m the only one? Thank again.

Look at it this way: If you will scam me on small things, why should I trust you at all?

And on that shipping and handling scam: The last thing I need is more CDs or DVDs to store. Plus, this is the Web. If I want your info at all, I want it right now! Not whenever the post office gets around to processing it.

So there. I’ve said it. I feel better. How about you?

The goal is to make money by linking to offers to get people to buy things. Supposedly other Twitter users will like and trust you and want to buy from you because they feel that they know you.

I am twittering. In fact, I have several Twitter IDs, one for each niche I blog in, because my niches range from angels and art to political snarkery, marketing snarkery, and how to talk like a Texan—among others.

You can reach me at any of the following Twitter IDs: AngelWords, ArtFunCheap, DreamVisions, Glitzkat, KathleenGresham, kgresham, MarketingSnark, SnarkRemarks, TexasTalk, WhiteCranes, and a few others.

What I’m seeing, though, is that people are  just following other Twitter users wholesale in order to reciprocally build up their total followers. So who are these people?

If you have hundreds (or even dozens) of followers, how do you keep from being drowned out by the noise? I do weed out the really awful ones, but…even the ones that are left are not a focussed group—-for any of my IDs except maybe the Texas one.. Maybe.

Aren’t they all drowning each other out? How can they get any sense of my personality when I’m drowned out on my own Twitter streams?

And personally I don’t care about the really personal stuff—the stuff Twitter started for. Usually it is boring. I do not care what anybody ate for lunch. Originally I unfollowed anyone who was boring, but it is too late for that now.

So it seems to me that a Twitter following is like a very unfocused general mailing list. You have no way to know who is listening. Most followers do not know or care about you. Almost all of them are trying to sell something or other—-from real estate to Internet marketing products.

Shefren’s model seems to be based on the idea that people follow you because they know you and want to hear whatever you have to say—-even ordinary, personal stuff—like following a rock star. For Internet marketing legends like Shefren, that may be true.

But what if you are just an ordinary marketer? What if you are building up a Twitter following by using one of the services like TwitterGetter? What about for the rest of us?

This issue has been bothering me lately. (I did use TwitterGetter. Now I’m not sure that was a good idea.) 

So what do you think?

1. Many people check out web sites at the office. In a cubicle you cannot afford to have some sound blaring out. It annoys coworkers. And it looks bad. It sounds like you’re just aimlessly surfing—even if you are looking for something for work!

2. Those who visit your site from home may be surfing late, late at night. Nobody wants to wake up their kids or partner with your stupid web site. You have plenty of competitors that don’t do that.

3. Many of us do not use earphones, or may not have them plugged in at all times. Music or voices blaring out suddenly can be infuriating for many reasons.

4. If your site visitor is already listening to music or a video, the self-playing audio cuts across it, so they can’t really understand either one. So that’s waste of time. And guess which browser window they are going to close. That’s right: yours!

5. As a site visitor, I have a right to listen to what I want to, not what you want me to. So I get really annoyed. If I want to hear what you have to say, I’ll click the Start button and listen. If not, I have a right not to listen.

6. You’re just not that cute. Some marketers have voices like fingernails on a chalkboard. Others just sound stupid. How can you be sure that the impression you are creating is actually helping your business? At least, if the site visitor has the option to not listen, then if they do listen, it is because they are interested in what you have to say. If they choose to listen, they will forgive much more if your presentation is less than professional.

7. It’s just plain rude. On some level everyone knows that, and it makes you look bad. It suggests that you don’t respect your potential customers. It makes site visitors subliminally wonder what your customer services would be like. In short, it turns people off, even if they don’t leave right away—and many will leave right away.

So think twice before you put yourself out there. If you offer an audio presentation, fine. If you force it on site visitors, that’s counterproductive. Either way, audio is no substitute for a good visual presentation with good content. 

So give your site visitors a choice, and they will be much more receptive.

Just in case you think this does not apply to you, consider this. There is a professional TV presenter with whom I will not do business ever, because he (being so sure that he is so professional and so cute), forces his self-playing video on all visitors to his sites.

Consequently I cannot stand the man. And I often unsubscribe from the list of any marketer who sends me one of his offers. 

Yes, self-playing audio and video are that annoying. Let’s face it, you’re just not that cute. But even if you are that cute, bad manners make a bad impression.

Visitors deserve to have a choice of whether to listen to you or not. And we reserve the option to listen, or not, on our own schedule, not yours.