Why do some companies persist with marketing that doesn’t really work?

Most senior marketing people grew up in the pre-internet age and during internet 1.0 when traditional push methods still “worked”. I think this is why many companies still use annoying push methods. We know that response rates for telephone cold calling have fallen and with the rise of businesses and consumers now registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), we’ll soon be at the point where it will be illegal to cold call most numbers.

I’m registered with the TPS myself. I have been for a number of years now, but I still get calls every single week from organisations who claim not to know I’m registered. At least most of them get off the line once the person knows it is a TPS number. Some still persist in trying to make the call.

What is it that drives this kind of behaviour? I think the companies have worked out that however low the response rate, they still do get some customers. I wonder if they ask themselves about the people like me who say no thank you. All they’ve done is irritate me because they refuse to respect my wishes. I will never become a customer of theirs. The lifetime value of their relationship with me is negative. When you think of response rates of 1% or less, that’s 99% of people that you are targeting, actively do not like you!

To my mind these businesses are surviving despite their marketing rather than because of their marketing.

You’d think they would try other methods wouldn’t you? But as Einstein said, you can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. This is where bigger businesses are massively disadvantaged compared to the smaller ones. The vast majority of large businesses are hierarchies where all levels of management try to run the organisation to suit their own aims, at their shareholders’ expense. They dress it up differently, but rarely does anyone act against their perception of their own interest.

It almost doesn’t matter what your area of expertise, as the machine gun salesman at the battle of Hastings found, people tend to stick to what they know for fear of failure or fear of being found to be a fraud. It has been known since the 1950s that hierarchies are the arch enemy of innovation. The behaviours that live and breathe there are the opposite of those required for healthy innovation.

That is what affects the ability of the larger companies to evolve their marketing despite all the evidence that tells them change is necessary. In small businesses a different thing happens, they just tend to stop doing any marketing. They don’t upset anyone, but no-one knows they are there!