Seth Godin recently posted a blog titled Mowing the Lawn in which he talked about hating mowing the lawn as a kid with a broken down old mower. He goes on to advise:
“Every person who does marketing, sales, product design or any other job that influences customers directly should spend at least an hour a week answering the customer service lines, using the same tools your customer service people use.”
Well said, Seth! I want to go a step further and challenge marketing and sales professionals to eat their own marketing dog food. Every time you and your company make a decision to post ads, email prospects/customers, send newsletters, cold call, email unsolicited sales pitches, flat out spam people, troll for leads in special intrest groups or forums, create self-serving noise in social media outlets, post ad-style comments on blog posts, etc., etc., etc. first think of all the conversation Locations you use personally (blogs you read, sites you visit, mags you buy, Twitter hashtags you watch, forums you go to, etc.) and consider how you would like it if a company did those “marketing” things to you.
