Long-term thinking wins with marketing.
“Getting the sale” is not long-term thinking. Yes, it pads your P&L statement but can shortchange future earnings.
What does long-term thinking look like in marketing?
Caring for and establishing a relationship–built on empathy–with your customers. That is what ensures future earnings.
Let’s see this in action:
I’m a big CBD user. But not the Family Video kind. I enjoy researching and finding the best CBD products on the market.
That resulted in purchasing CBD from CBDistillery. After using their product for a month, I was ready to make my order a subscription (every six weeks, I receive a CBD bottle).
Everything was going well. But then I got this email from them:
Think about the objections that management could have given to this email.
“Why are you giving them the opportunity to cancel their shipment?”
“Who cares if they aren’t ready, that’s their responsibility!”
“We had a bad month in November, we NEEEED their order.”
Can you think of any other objections?
But somehow, by the grace of God, long-term thinking won. They realized that a happy customer, who was given a heads up and declined their order, is better than an angry customer who made the order.
Think about how many subscriptions you have that just take money out of your wallet. Some of them make sense not to alert you to every transaction. But with some, you’re pissed off that you weren’t given a heads up, resulting in cancellation.
And churn is the devil for marketing. Churn forces marketing to continue to drive new leads at higher costs.
How to avoid churn and secure future earnings? Care and use empathy.
CBDistillery put themselves in my shoes.
“If I was Jordan–and I was already loaded up on CBD–do I really want to fork out another $60 for product I don’t need? Probably not. So, we should send him an email 2 weeks before his order and check in.”
“Great idea Tim! You get a raise.”
Lol. Such an unfamiliar conversation. At least for me and what I hear around marketing.
I would expect to hear the objections above, resulting in a canned email idea.
“Give them a chance to not pay us? What a dumb idea! We need to fire Tim.”
That’s more like it.
But the thing is, I ordered over $300 from CBDistillery in the following weeks for Christmas gifts and stocking up for myself.
Without that email, I doubt that would have happened. And that’s only a few weeks after; talk about future earnings!
Getting a buck today feels good. But getting 300 bucks in the future is a lot better for your business.
Marketeer Insights ⚔️
- Optimizing for the dollar in the short term can significantly undermine long-term profitability
- Instead, build a lasting relationship with your customers founded on care and empathy
- Use email to stay top of mind and show you care—it’s not enough to say you care; you need to show me you see me for more than the dollars I give you
🧠 + ❤️ // JO