Stop shouting and be heard: The Series

By: R. Jason Rowe | Managing Director, Corporate Marketing & Growth

Shouting is a root cause of sales and marketing failures.

In this series, we hope to empower good brands to do better and call out bad actors. Our intended audience is professionals representing products or services that require more than an impulse commitment and investment, and who want to not only sell, but retain and grow their customer relationships, earning recurring revenue and referral advocacy along the way.

Our desired outcomes are to:

1. Help you achieve better performance and returns on your existing investments.
2. Help you to accelerate your journey towards sustainable growth.
3. Help you determine if we're simpatico as a potential strategic partner.

You won't see us step off this soapbox until we've run out of breath, or the deafening cacophony of AI generated, SaaS automated, impersonal and intrusive SHOUTING from marketers and sellers is silenced.

A Top 10 sampling of the shouting we'll address and deconstruct includes:

• Websites: where first impressions are fumbled far too often.
• Paid search: where you pay more to shout louder, win or lose.
• Automated 'nurture': where authentic connection goes to die.
• Product & Service Marketing: where we tell far more than we show.
• 'Eat what you kill' selling: where people are objectified for profits.
• Pitch slapping: where connection is taken for swiping right.
• Email: where intrusion turns people into cans of 'meat product'. (Spam)
• Smile and dial: where potential customers are treated like cattle.
• Pop ups: where user experience is discarded due to FOMO.
• Trade Shows: where Wall Street trading meets snake oil selling.

None of these tactics were created with the intention of shouting at people. Each are inherently effective, if not vital tools for business development. But in the spirit of our 'Fix it first' approach here at the Hammer Forge, we seek to inform and influence more effective ways of leveraging these and other business development methods.

We'll look at 'right idea, wrong execution' through business-to-human lenses, taking different audiences, outcomes, and success measures into account as no two businesses or customers are exactly alike. And we will tackle complex and nuanced topics in as relatable way as possible. No fluff. No hyperbole. No pitch slapping.

We hope you'll follow along with us and share your own experiences in the comments so that we can learn and grow from your insights as well.

Next up

A better way to be seen, heard, and remembered in a crowded marketplace, other than over-reliance and over-investment in paid advertising.