We’ve all known that one person..
They text you, you don’t respond. They text you again.. and again. You’d think they’d get the hint!
The last thing you’d want is to discover is that you’re that person, especially in the eyes of potential customers. Most of the time, marketers go on marketing without ever realizing their message is falling on deaf ears.
While your audience is unlikely to flat out tell you you’re annoying, there are some pretty clear tell-tale signs.
1. You’re getting a significant amount of email unsubscribes.
You can probably relate to the frustration felt when finding your email inbox is filled with marketing emails. Many people will simply scroll past undesirable emails. If they are motivated enough to open the email and actually unsubscribe, that’s a sure sign you’re going overboard with your email marketing.
Aim to stay under a .5% unsubscribe rate. Anything over that is a sign your email marketing is annoying potential customers.
2. The wrong audience is contacting you.
If you’re wondering why you’re interacting with the wrong market altogether, your branding isn’t coming across clearly. When you market to the wrong audience, eventually they’re going to get very annoyed.
3. The majority of your marketing strategy involves ads.
Advertisements.. While they can be very effective, they can also have negative results and hurt your brand’s image. If your business only invests in ads you could be making a big mistake.
When’s the last time you thought about nurturing your audience? Do you give them what they actually want, rather than what you wish they would want?
Many businesses are using inbound marketing to convert potential customers, by providing the answers to questions they’re already asking in search engines. This strategy involves content and blog posts, and will actually help your website rank higher in search engines as well.
This video explains the inbound marketing philosophy:
4. Social media followers are unliking your page.
If you’re posting on controversial or irrelevant topics, posting way too much or on the flip side, not enough – your page is probably getting unliked.
So what number of posts hit the sweet spot? Well, it depends. This data from Hubspot shows social media post performance varies according to your Page’s fan base.
How to check your Facebook unlikes:
- Select Insights at the top of your Facebook Page.
- Select Likes.
- Choose a date range.
- Scroll down to Net Likes and take a look.
5. You’re sending too many follow up emails.
If you’ve just sold a customer a product or service, their review could help your business move forward in the right direction as well as encourage other potential customers to convert. As exciting as that may be, if you badger them for a review you’re probably not going to get a repeat customer, and maybe even a bad review.
While these signs serve as big indications that your marketing is annoying customers, it’s important to remember another possibility. If people are unliking, unsubscribing, etc., they may just not be your target market.
For example, if you’re promoting wedding planning services and some of your recipients’ weddings have came and went, they’re no longer your target market and are consequently not interested.
All in all, it’s important to take notice of signs you’re being annoying, but don’t take it to heart. Just like that person who texts you way too much: you’re doing them a favor by cutting ties since you’re probably not right for them anyway.
