The Doorbell Beat The Fireworks

We had a real arsenal ready. Personalized sales sequences. Webinars. A multi-touch drip campaign with the kind of segmentation that makes a marketer feel like a commander pushing little flags around a map. Months of build went into it.

Then, three days after launch, almost a third of the target customers had booked meetings. The webinar hadn’t aired. The clever sequences hadn’t fired. Most of the reps hadn’t even started.

What did the work was a plain notice inside the product. A small rectangle that appeared while people were already in there, doing their jobs. It read like a short news release. No spectacle. Just a knock on a door someone happened to be standing behind. The messaging of it wasn’t even that remarkable; it was a tease to a landing page that was.

Here is the part I keep turning over since it happened… We treat attention like something you go out and capture. You buy it, you chase it, you stage a show grand enough to pull people out of their day. But the cheapest attention in the world is the attention already in the room. The customer was inside the product. We only had to say something where they were standing, instead of mailing (emailing…) it to where we hoped they might be.

The fireworks were not wasted. They earned their keep later, for the folks who needed a second and third nudge. But the first thirty percent came from the least impressive channel we owned. The one nobody screenshots for the case study.

Stay Positive & Build The Show… Just Ring The Doorbell First