Is your database winning you business?

One of the most valuable assets a company can have is a database of customers and potential customers. But you can only turn those people into business if you use that information to help you build and manage a relationship with them.

Here’s a good example. Two months ago I went to a conference and visited the various exhibitor displays attached to it.

I was particularly interested in a number of new products and services available and made a point of talking directly to the person on the display, explaining how I could use their services for some of my clients.

Each one of them promised to follow up later with detailed information about their products, services and pricing.

Two months later, only one of them has.

Which leads me to wonder, why are these people throwing their money away?

A couple of thousand dollars in sponsorship, exhibitor fees, travel and accommodation put them right in front of a potential client with the will and the money to spend and they haven’t converted me into a customer.

Sure, I’m on their database. But because they have not followed through on the relationship I am no longer interested in doing business with them.

Can you take me to your website?

I was sitting watching television the other night when another community service announcement came on with photos of a mother lovingly breastfeeding her baby.

As my brain slowly tuned out this message, the baby opened his eyes and spoke.

By this stage, the double Yuk factor has set in – breastfeeding and talking babies. Could this get any worse?

But it was the words the baby spoke that made me sit up and take notice:“Get ahead in life. Suck up to the boss.”

You can see the ad for yourself on the Australian Breastfeeding Association’s website at http://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/media/breast01.mpg

Whether or not you like the idea of breastfeeding or even the ad itself, it offers some useful lessons for anyone creating advertising for any medium.

• Surprise: Not the fact that the baby spoke, but what he said.
  
• Humour: The play on words was funny.
  
• Contrast: Between the softness of the breastfeeding shots to the starkness of the talking baby.

Will it make more women breastfeed? Probably not.

But it made me go and look at their website.