Apparently there are some people out there who haven’t gotten the word that the days of mass marketing are over. These troglodytes are still randomly pushing an untargeted, self-serving message on people.
I call this To Whom It May Concern Marketing. I don’t know about you, but receiving something addressed "To Whom It May Concern" sure gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
This type of marketing just makes people mad. They have enough on their minds without someone trying to elbow their way in with an offer that is of no interest. Typically, the offers are all about the product or service and not about the benefit to the prospect.
Today, whether you are selling yourself with a cover letter and resume or selling a product, it is a one-to-one world.
I frequently receive notes to my email address that are addressed "To Whom It May Concern", or "Hiring Manager", or even "Please pass this along to the appropriate person." These PR job seekers exemplify this bad "marketing" behavior.
I used to respond to these people. I’d tell them: if you are looking for a job, it is your job to find it, not mine. Do a little research and find the right person - by name – to target before you pull the trigger. I’ve stopped responding.
On our website it is not hard to discover that we are a network of independent professionals. This means we don’t have employees, and that probably should tell an intelligent job seeker that we don’t need or want resumes.
Whether you sell products to customers, yourself to a hiring manager, or story ideas to journalists, you need to target people who have an interest and provide them information about how they’ll benefit.
Marketers need to embrace this one-to-one world. Those dinosaurs refusing to do so are destined for extinction.
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