Quality versus Quantity.
Which is better?
If you know me at all, you’ll bet I choose Quality; and you’d be right – every time.
Consider all of the times you’ve dealt with Customer Service for a large company. Out of all the interactions you had, what percentage of them were pretty awesome? I’m going to take a stab and say that it’s a very low number.
So if you have a bad experience, what do you do? Perhaps you complain. And do the companies care? Do they actually do anything about it?
Think now about the “Occupy *blank*” movements. Quite literally, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have complained to governments and big business to change their ways. And what positive change has that brought about?
Now head over to oDesk.com. Do a search for an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) project or long term job. Look at the rates being bid upon, look at the average rate the employer pays; it’s pennies on the dollar.
Go to LinkedIn.com. Look at the discussions in an SEO group – if the group manager is slack (like most are), then you’ll see the majority of “discussions” are mainly spam. Get bold and become a manager of a group like I did. Delete those topics, send warning posts, delete shady members and…it never stops – they don’t get the message nor care.
Or how about reporting Spam email messages. Does it stop them?
Why Quality is so-often overlooked in favor of Quantity
So why, in all of these examples, and countless others, does nothing positive happen?
Because the world is obsessed with Quantity over Quality. Why on earth should they care about dissatisfaction from a relatively small number of complainants when the potential opportunities or the non-complainers occupy a much higher number?
And then there is the appearance of the ever-decreasing natural resource: TIME. People feel they have less and less of it – so they need to make those efforts multi-faceted and cover as much ground as necessary in as little time as possible.
Think About It
What would happen if
- At a restaurant, your waiter buzzed from table to table, getting orders incorrect, not clearing your dishes til after you left, not re-filling your drinks, etc.?
- You practice a martial arts technique 10,000 times without focusing on proper execution, power, speed, timing, relaxation, application, body structure & alignment, footwork, etc.?
- You have several job interviews planned in one day and cut each employer short because you’re going to be late to the next one?
- As a student, you blaze through all required reading assignments and remember nothing from them?
- Your legs and ribs are broken from an automobile accident, where a driver didn’t have time for pesky stop lights?
- You spent tens of thousands of dollars in the hottest new automated marketing delivery software and yet…you have a .07% ROI (Return on Investment)?
- After your father dies in the hospital due to malpractice, the judge says “Well, 1 out of 10,000 isn’t bad at all”?
- People used the bathroom without wiping (it takes up too much time)?
Now let’s look at the flip-side. What would happen if
- Your waiter did their job amazingly well, was conversational, cleared dishes on time, did not seem rushed, smiled, apologized for any mistakes, etc.,?
- You practice said martial arts technique perfectly, paying attention to all important details, perhaps even focusing on one aspect at a time?
- During rush hour traffic, someone paused and waved you into the line of traffic?
- A brand actually responds conversationally to you after you left a comment on one of their Facebook posts?
Quality Does Matter
You get the point. And the point is Quality DOES Matter!
This has HUGE effects on not only life in so many different aspects but more specifically on Online Marketing and SEO as well.
THINK before you blast out 500k email marketing campaigns – did you really create your customer personas? Did you really select all the relevant criteria when creating that query of your CRM or database? Are you really sending the email at the right time to the right people? Does your offer really stand out?
THINK before you engage in another mad-genius Social Marketing effort of blasting links, Tweets, blog posts, re-sharing, etc., nearly a hundred times a day. Do your customers or potentials really want or need your stuff in their faces that frequently?
THINK before you post a project on oDesk and accept a bid at $2 per hour or some other ridiculous thing (I was personally just approached about an Online Marketing & SEO Manager role, paying $16 per hour – and the average Costco employee makes $17 per hour…get a clue)
THINK before you send out the fifth touch-point email to a potential customer in a month
THINK before you release your Customer Service reps into the wild – Do they really understand the processes enough that they can Converse with the Customer?
And THINK before you enter into some sort of Link Scheme.
In short, Quantity over Quality is the way of the World. In some instances, this is necessary, for example, direct sales (those who don’t understand the difference between Sales and Marketing drive me up the wall, by the way, ). Yet in most other circumstances, it’s a horrible trend that rarely produces anything resembling a positive experience for either party.
Think about it.