Purchasing a product or service is no longer enough. Companies, businesses – even individual product sellers are no longer satisfied with getting the sale.
They want to extract more value from the customer so how are they doing this well one they want you to subscribe to their emails so they want to market to you over and over again now. What’s increasingly becoming popular is for marketers to push for texts they want to be inside of your phone because they know that’s the most direct way to get to you.
You’re also asked for social media follows social media likes so when we say social media it’s important to note that that’s not just one platform right. There’s Twitter, there’s Instagram, there’s Facebook, there’s YouTube, and there’s TikTok, and there’s even Snapchat. And there may be a few others I’ve not that aren’t in the mainstream but the the point is is that you’re being asked for follow everywhere.
You’re being asked to leave reviews so nobody signed up to leave a review but yet you’ve still got that e-mail in your inbox asking you to leave a review. I even had a moving company that I had hired five months ago send me an e-mail asking me to vote for them in the city best mover contest.
When we’re at the stores or when we’re at certain restaurants were being asked to donate to charity. It’s common in PetSmart or at the grocery stores – there are several where I live in where they’ll ask to donate to charity. I know Chipotle asks you to round up for some sort of charitable cause.
Of course, when we go to stores like Best Buy and target we’re asked if we want to sign up for a credit card and I’m sure there are more examples but the point is is that we as customers are constantly being – we’re we’re being mined for more value than just our business.
Which our business should suffice but now because of all the different marketing avenues and the different ways that we can be requested to engage and participate in the brand or the company or whatever it is we’re being asked that because marketers know that there’s real value in getting a review in getting a follow on social media in being able to remarket to us over and over and over again.
So the problem is is that we as customers are being asked this on top of our purchase and yet we’ve already paid the money but in the subsequent requests we’re not getting anything in return – there’s no value that is being reciprocated by the seller. In the in the mover e-mail the the text literally said the word, beg – they were begging for the vote and reminding me of how fast it could I could do XYZ go and click on this link and go to the website and vote.
But it’s not just one instance that is the problem necessarily, although I do think it is annoying. The problem is in the aggregate as a consumer you are being bombarded with with sellers trying to extract value from you which generally means your time and energy and focus needs to be on them and investing in them rather than being done with this transaction.
This initial transaction now if you are are such that customer that you really want to be engaged with said seller that’s fine but the vast majority don’t so I think the the point of this episode is just to point out how much how far that companies and businesses and product sellers are taking this and how they’re not stopping it’s this is always about what is the next thing that we can do to extract value from our customers.
And as a consumer I’m out. I’m actually looking for anybody that doesn’t do this so it wouldn’t necessarily apply on a product level because products usually don’t do this when I buy a product off of Amazon I usually don’t get the seller that is making frequent requests of meeting I think part of that is because Amazon is now curtailed some of the abusive marketing but it still does happen you still might get a note in your product or or whatever it is.
But for those for those companies that are platforms and that someone would frequent and go back to on a reoccurring basis if those if those companies were to simply let transactions be and let them in there I think subconsciously that’s going to seep into the customers subconscious as having a better experience and being willing to pay more to be unencumbered with offers and requests and simply be have transactions be completed.
We all know that with the software as a service I don’t know if I don’t know what the proper term would be but with software as a service taking hold and they’re constantly being more and more ways that seemingly every product or service that is able to is now seeking to have customers on recurring payments it the I think what’s happening is consumers are being fatigued out of this the whole thing.
The whole marketplace really and so I think what is going to happen is if some companies focus in on simply making a better experience they can get those increased margins because customers will realize I would rather pay more and not have to deal with this bombardment of spam and requests and additional questions and you know and being asked to donate to charity when all I’m trying to do is buy a bag of dog food or buy a pair of shoes.
In isolated, isolated alone these requests don’t seem like that much but when you stack them and you aggregate them across so many brands and across so many companies and so many retail spaces eventually it comes to the point where you don’t want to deal with it anymore