Dear fellow zoomers,
Today I share with you a mistake I made in marketing, as Alex Hormozi would say, here are my lessons, with none of the scars.
I recently took on the challenge of performing outreach for my community The Less Than 1% Club, I reached out to several different organizations in the hopes of being able to generate story-oriented content around the founders and their business journeys. My goal? Our community often does not see the journey, we only see the success story after it has all happened, we don’t often understand where people are coming from and even though we see a person of color able to achieve, these success stories often feel akin to winning the lotto. I want to give people tangible steps to success in marketing and business.
Many organizations I reached out to never even gave me a reply, (tis’ life) but I was lucky enough to get a yes, and when I did I was beyond excited. I sent over my questions and waited for my replies. Gaining the replies took weeks, but I didn’t pester, because as small business goes – everyone is wearing 10 different hats and at any given time has 100 different responsibilities. When I got my answers back I was ecstatic.
I started to review the insights, cracking my knuckles over a fresh LinkedIn article draft. I pulled one of the references mentioned within the answers by the founder, seeing if it was possible to pull a reference link, and to my dismay, this founder has utilized the same copy, verbatim, across more than 3 different media companies who have shared her business. I am officially a certified 🤡.
My first reaction (human nature) was disappointment. I had been under the impression that this organization wanted to work with me, and as it turns out I was an afterthought, Copy + Paste.
My second reaction was to self-reflect, if I had done more research on their previous interviews in advance, I could have come up with better questions, and potentially have gotten better or more relevant answers that this founder has not already been asked 100 times.
My third reaction was how the heck do I respond to this organization, and let them know that for reasons I mentioned above, I can’t utilize this content. Especially without coming off as ungrateful for the opportunity, or their time.
I wrote a thoughtful response, a respectful decline, and mentioned that I had noticed the use of recycled verbiage. I mentioned that my goal was to talk about their business in 2024 and that I didn’t find it relevant to my audience to share something made in 2022. I wished them success in their endeavors and offered to work together when our visions were in better alignment.
and zoomers, that was that.
I will probably never hear from this organization ever again 😆 and that is more than within their right. I live by my mission to serve my community utilizing my lived experience. If I hadn’t dug deeper into what I had received I would have potentially made myself, and the community I am attempting to build, appear irrelevant, and in marketing, that is the last thing you want to do.
So zoomers, I leave you with my advice in plainest terms:
- When you are committing to outreach do as much of it as possible, and do not limit your prospects, because opportunities could be not-pportunities.
- Even when you think you are at the finish line, double back for a thorough review, you don’t want to share dated or irrelevant info.
- When you are curating content, commit to social listening, you need to see what is currently in the space before you share or bring in your prospect or partner.
Until next time!
Signing off for the day.
Claudia Cherrington Lopez 