When does digital wooing work best?

It was the worst Tinder date ever.

How would you react if this happened to you?

Dating app mishaps are all too common in modern life. But my friend told me the wildest story from her recent Tinder date.

About a month ago while swiping through her latest onslaught of Tinder profiles, she stopped on the profile of a handsome man.  She loved the profile picture of him on a hiking trail walking his dog.  Very promising! She is a doctor, and he works in medical marketing, so they shared common professional interests! She was intrigued.  After spending several minutes studying his profile details – university, interests, and hobbies – she swiped right.  Match!

They chatted about a week over Tinder before deciding to finally meet in person. She figured they had gone as far as they could go in the app.

Scheduling the date proved difficult.  She was very busy at the hospital, and it turned out that he lived almost two hours away.  It took 3 weeks to find the time, but the date was set at a café in central Paris.

He arrived at the café.  Even though he was visibility exhausted from his two-hour trip, he looked even better in person than in his picture. She was excited to see how the date would go. He sat down, thanked her for seeing him….

And then he pulled out his iPad and gave a PowerPoint presentation of the EXACT same details on his Tinder page. 

She was a better person than me.  She sat through the 10 slides politely and asked an occasional question.  I would have left!

This is a totally a true story! It just wasn't a date but a sales call.

Marketers! Let your digital channels work their magic at the moment in your customer’s journey where they work best!  Which moment you might ask?  I don’t know. It depends on your brand, your target customer, and the relationship you have built with them.

To be clear, the iPad was not the problem on this date. He shared the wrong content, on the wrong channel, at the COMPLETELY wrong time.

What if he, instead, showed her a video of his dog playing on the beach while he told the story of rescuing him from an animal shelter?

What if, post-date, she accesses his Instagram and sees not only that his hiking photos are gorgeous but that he also owns a chalet in the Alps?

The chances of a second date are near 100%.

When does digital wooing work best?

We are doing digital strategy all wrong

Digital Marketers: We are doing strategy all wrong.

Answer the following 3 questions before championing a digital solution:

1. What KPI is lagging in your customer journey? You can argue that the best customer engagement strategies are end-to-end, but if you have excellent acquisition and loyalty but poor advocacy, then you should start there.

2. What customer behavior are you trying to change? A channel in your strategy is a means, not a result. Your problem is not that you lack a digital advocacy problem but that your customers are not recommending your product to their peers. That behavior insight is the basis of your engagement strategy. Solve that problem.

3. What are your internal capabilities? Budgets are tight, and you may already have adequate digital assets. But if there is a gap between what your company can achieve and the change that is necessary, you need to make the business case.

Are there other questions to consider? Comment below!

Crazy Idea: Hire a Luddite

Here's a crazy idea: Hire a luddite for your digital marketing team.

Luddites were textile workers in 19th Century England who destroyed machinery that was used to replace workers, drive down wages, and produce inferior products. Today, it is used to describe someone who is opposed to technological change.

Change in 2024 requires tech visionaries, but the luddite* will benefit your team in two ways:

First, your digital transformation project will be challenged if customer experience suffers. Quality should not be sacrificed for digital. That may sound obvious, but i interacted with dozens of doctors in 2023 who were forced to bear through poorly prepared product presentations delivered on unorganized detailing tools.

Digital should delight your customer, and the luddite will hold you accountable.

Second, the luddite will ensure that digital empowers your sales team. In fact, find ways for digital to enhance the sales call or free up time to focus on more purposeful customer interactions, and you may have just found your most loyal, eager digital advocate.

What else do techno-skeptics bring to the table? Comment below!