High Tech or Hustle? Getting ahead of the pack

Last week I went on a demo binge in an attempt to find some social media management software.

Over a period of 4 hours, I checked out some 30 services, signing up for online demo’s for as many as I could. I even gave my credit card number to a few that didn’t have demo’s so I could make an informed decision. The services I looked at are priced at between $500 and $5000 per year. Real money.

In marketing terms, I was “a high value prospect demonstrating purchase intent”.

Within 24 hours exactly one sales person had followed up with me. Guess which company got $1200 worth of business from us?

A week later, I’m noticing an awful lot of advertisements for another company we checked out. That’s typically called “retargeting” – an advertising tactic that online marketers use to reach out to people that visited their websites but didn’t end up buying.

Retargeting is clever. Phone calls and building relationships are effective.

Hustle trumps high tech.