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<\/a><\/p>\nAs for Napoleon, in Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace that his defeated opponents at Austerlitz relied on \u201cthe new science of strategy.\u201d But Napoleon was most influenced by a book called An Essay on Tactics by the Comte de Guibert.<\/p>\n
This brings me to just about the most basic tactic in marketing strategy: replying to customers.<\/p>\n
The plain fact is that many firms are either not very good or completely useless at it. \u00a0This means many of the billions thrown at marketing has had little effect. In fact it may even do damage<\/p>\n
Majestic sloth and incompetence<\/strong><\/p>\n In a U.K. survey a while ago 100 mail order firms in 10 market sectors were asked via email for their printed catalogue or brochure.<\/p>\n 34% never even replied, and of those that did, average response time was nearly 4.5 days.\u00a0 Only 18% bothered to personalize the reply.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t you find that terrifying? It implies that over a third of all direct response advertising is wasted.<\/p>\n It\u2019s actually even worse. You are better off not advertising at all than advertising, then not replying. At least if you do nothing you are not angering people.<\/p>\n Failing to personalise lowers your likely conversion rate; and every day you delay replying cuts your eventual conversion rate.<\/p>\n As direct marketing \u2013 online or off – has become more accepted (it\u2019s far bigger now than advertising<\/a>) it has drifted away from practicality.<\/p>\n In earlier days, either you got sales \u2013 or you got fired. Now there are scores of courses, diplomas and so forth \u2013 but far too many idle quasi-intellectual plonkers taking them.<\/p>\n Try this little experiment<\/strong><\/p>\n You might imagine that with the growing pervasiveness of the internet, where everything can be measured, things would improve. Far from it, as you will find if you conduct a little experiment .<\/p>\n Take any ten websites at random. Go on them and see if you immediately see an offer of something helpful. If not, they are missing tricks. Then see what they send you. \u00a0Well, is it helpful \u2013 or just sales waffle?<\/p>\n Then wait and see how they follow up, and for how long. They should keep at you until you either buy or unsubscribe<\/p>\n Unfortunately the people who do these things best are the rogue internet \u201cYou\u2019ll be rich in three weeks\u201d scamsters. Most ordinary marketers are utterly useless<\/p>\n Returning to the Duke of Wellington: when he was reviewing new recruits in the Peninsular War he said to one of his aides, \u201cI don\u2019t know what they\u2019ll do to the enemy, but by God, they terrify me.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, in those days the army recruited drunks and criminals from the gutters. But at least they were very good at killing people.<\/p>\n – Drayton<\/em><\/p>\n