Marketing Caution: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Yesterday was a road-trip day, driving from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin to just north of Battle Creek, Michigan as part of our family vacation. Wanting to get one more blog post written for Monday, I decided to peruse roadside advertising for some marketing inspiration.

What I got was a series of ho-hum, cliché billboards for various restaurants, sales, and the like; I thought to myself, why do companies try to get a catch-phrase to catch on – it’s such an expensive endeavor! Will I remember that Cracker Barrel tagline tomorrow? No. And I don’t.

A bit dejected, I caught site of the side mirror with the phrase: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

I thought, that’s very true in life as well as on the road.

Often, things we thought we left behind us come back to run us off into the ditch. And things we weren’t watching out for – competitors, technology, etc. – can catch up to us and overtake us if we aren’t paying attention. From a marketing standpoint, check those rear-view mirrors often for these 3 objects that are likely much, much closer than they appear:

1- The Competition
Take stock of what your direct and indirect competitors are doing. Is there a new business in town? Is new technology available to your industry? Is there a substitute product or service offering that could make what you have to offer obsolete? Who among your competitors is doing ‘what you do’ better than you? More efficiently? More inexpensively?

And just like on the road, don’t just watch what the competitor right behind you is doing – see if you can get a glimpse of speedsters coming up fast in the lane beside you.

2 – Dissatisfied Customers
You’ve probably heard this before: It’s not necessarily a problem that will result in a lost customer; it’s how you handle the problem. That customer who left yesterday in a huff because your clerk was rude, distracted or un-knowledgeable about your products or services? Today they’re calling you, sending you an e-mail or writing you a letter to tell you that you failed to satisfy. That is, if you’re lucky; if not, they’re already on Facebook telling all their friends and the whole world about how bad your business is.

You thought you left the problem behind when the customer walked out the door, but those bad reviews are going to be much, much closer than they appear, and they’ll result in lost business and lost sales. Responding to customer complaints as quickly as possible will help to minimize damage to your reputation and bad reviews online. If you messed up, say so, and make it right. If you didn’t mess up, you should still acknowledge the complainant’s feelings and experience as legitimate (their perception is, after all, their reality) and do what you can to provide them with new, more positive experiences.

3 – Problem Employees
So you sat down with the employee who caused the dissatisfaction noted in point #2 above, and now you believe that the problem is in the past. But if this employee has a history of providing poor customer experiences or if your communication was not clear to them, you stand a good chance of continued problems.

A point I have made in all of my books, including 365 Days of Marketing: employer loyalty is a highly laudable quality, especially in this economy when employers can have their pick of even the best employees who have been affected by the recession and slow economy. However, employer loyalty is misplaced when it is bestowed equally on top performers and conscientious, customer-service minded staff as it is on individuals who provide poor customer service, who negatively impact morale in your organization, who are cynical or even subversive when it comes to your programs and initiatives or who otherwise negatively impact your organization.

As you’re cruising down the road this summer, check those rear-view mirrors for these things that could come back to run you off the road!


Elizabeth Kraus – 12monthsofmarketing.com
365 Days of Marketing is available on amazon.com in book and digital formats.