Demand Generation

I had an instructive encounter with marketing as practiced by small business recently. The shop in question does auto repairs and service. They have five-star reviews online from over a hundred customers and that gave me the confidence to contact them. When  I called, the friendly owner got some basic information to make sure she understood what I needed to be done and when. As the scheduling process got underway, she engaged me some more and got additional data points that clearly were aimed at building a customer database. I did have the option of declining to supply this extra information but professional curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see what they would do with it. I was charged nothing for the diagnostics, provided a detailed report of what needed to be done and a cost estimate. My whole experience was positive and I would definitely recommend them anyone I know to use them for the same reasons I did.  

The next day, I received a Thank You email from their demand generation system. Cloud-based and tailored to serve the needs of small business, the system checks all boxes- pricing, ease of use, access to data and analytics and more. It is no wonder that this small shop had invested in such a solution. They were clearly doing a fine job of collecting data at new customer onboarding. Among other things there the Thank You email offered to connect me to their community of customers - I can see the value to that as well. Yet despite all this goodness all around, the first thing I did was to unsubscribe myself from the system. It's great for the small business if  I am an outlier in how I responded to their marketing efforts. The whole experience made me think about how difficult it is to strike the right chord with a diverse customer base for a small business lacking resources to solve this complex problem