Why saying you’re brilliant is considerably easier than actually being brilliant.
Marketing is, when you strip away the dashboards, funnels, algorithms and suspiciously complicated diagrams, essentially a promise.
We can help you. We’re good at this. You can trust us.
Businesses spend enormous amounts making these promises.
Advertising campaigns are created. Websites redesigned. Brand propositions refined, videos produced featuring attractive people walking purposefully through offices while pointing enthusiastically at screens.
Everything creates an expectation.
Then somebody becomes a customer.
And that’s when things get interesting.
Because marketing has made the promise.
Now the rest of the business has to keep it.
Marketing Is Very Good at First Dates
Marketing is your business getting ready for a first date.
You wear your best clothes, choose an attractive photograph, say interesting things and try not to mention the slightly concerning collection of unfinished CRM projects in the basement.
Your website says: “We’re easy to work with.”
Your advertising says: “We put customers first.”
Wonderful.
Then the customer calls.
“Your call is important to us.”
They wait. And wait. After eleven minutes of instrumental music, they begin wondering precisely how important their call actually is. By minute seventeen, they’re emotionally invested in the oboe player.
This is where marketing encounters reality.
And reality can be rather unforgiving.
Every Marketing Message Creates an Expectation
Every claim creates an expectation.
Say you’re fast? Customers expect speed.
Say you’re simple? They expect simplicity.
Say you’re friendly? They expect human beings, not twelve automated emails beginning with “Your ticket has been received.”
Say you provide exceptional service? They expect something exceptional.
Good marketing should give customers a compelling reason to choose you. But the more ambitious the promise, the more important the delivery becomes.
You can’t advertise your way around the gap between what you say and what customers experience.
Eventually, they notice.
Customers Don’t Know About Your Departments
Inside your business, everything makes perfect sense.
Marketing runs campaigns. Sales handles prospects. Operations delivers. Finance sends invoices. Customer service deals with problems.
IT periodically asks whether you’ve tried switching it off and on again.
Unfortunately, nobody explained this organisational structure to your customer.
They experience one thing: Your business.
If the website is wonderful but the salesperson is rude, that’s your brand.
If sales is fantastic but onboarding is chaotic, that’s your brand.
If the product is excellent but the invoice looks like it was designed for communication with an alien civilisation, that’s your brand.
Customers don’t think: “Marketing was excellent, although Operations appear to be experiencing some internal process challenges.”
They think: “These people are difficult to deal with.”
The Promise Doesn’t End at Purchase
Many businesses behave as though marketing’s job ends when somebody buys.
Lead generated. Sale completed. CRM updated. Everyone celebrates.
Except this is precisely where things become important.
Now the customer is collecting evidence.
Was the promise true?
Were you actually helpful?
Was delivery smooth?
Did somebody answer when there was a problem?
Did anyone remember the customer existed after the money arrived?
This is the moment your marketing claims either become credible or become evidence for the prosecution.
Tiny Things Carry Enormous Weight
Businesses naturally focus on big initiatives.
The new website.
The advertising campaign.
The rebrand.
The sophisticated automation system containing fourteen thousand workflows and one email nobody knows how to switch off.
Customers often remember smaller things.
Someone returned their call.
An engineer arrived on time.
A receptionist remembered their name.
An email explained something clearly.
Someone admitted they’d made a mistake.
A salesperson called three months later without trying to sell anything.
These aren’t usually included in marketing plans.
But they’re marketing.
Because they’re the moments customers talk about.
As I explore in Episode 14 of The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing, small experiences become stories. And stories travel.
What Happens When Things Go Wrong?
Here’s some reassuring news.
You don’t have to be perfect.
Deliveries are late. Systems fail. Emails get missed. Products develop faults.
Someone accidentally sends the spreadsheet called FINAL_v7_ACTUAL_FINAL_USE_THIS_ONE.xlsx.
It happens.
What matters is what happens next.
Do you hide? Blame somebody else? Send the customer through six departments?
Or say: “Sorry. We got this wrong. Here’s what we’re going to do about it.”
Handled properly, a mistake can actually strengthen a relationship.
Customers often remember how you responded more than the original problem.
Your Customers Have Joined the Marketing Department
Your customers now have audiences.
LinkedIn. Google Reviews. Reddit. WhatsApp groups. Industry forums. Friends and colleagues.
And, depending on how badly you’ve annoyed them, possibly an entire Sunday afternoon available to describe the experience in extraordinary detail.
Every customer now has a microphone.
That’s one of the central ideas behind Episode 14.
A phone call can become a recommendation.
Great service can become a LinkedIn post.
A terrible experience can become a review.
You might not think of these things as marketing.
Your customers might.
The Most Powerful Advertising Often Happens After the Sale
Imagine two adverts.
The first says: “We provide outstanding customer service.”
The second is your colleague saying: “We use them. They’re brilliant. Whenever there’s a problem, they sort it immediately.”
Which do you believe?
Probably the second.
Marketing says: “Trust us.”
Customer experience creates someone else willing to say: “I do.”
That’s considerably more persuasive.
Give Customers Something Worth Talking About
Businesses often ask: “How can we get customers talking about us?”
Usually shortly before someone suggests an elaborate referral campaign involving discount codes, automated emails and possibly branded water bottles.
There’s a simpler question:
What are we doing that’s worth talking about?
People tell stories about remarkable experiences.
Remarkably good.
Remarkably bad.
Nobody phones a colleague and says: “You won’t believe what happened. I ordered something, and it arrived approximately when expected.”
That’s not a story.
That’s Tuesday.
But when somebody goes beyond expectations?
That travels.
And enough positive stories eventually become something extremely valuable:
Reputation.
Customer Experience Is Brand Strategy
Customer experience shouldn’t simply belong to customer service.
It’s a strategic brand issue.
Marketing can spend months positioning your business as easy, human, responsive and reliable.
But if the organisation doesn’t behave that way, the positioning is meaningless.
A brand isn’t what the marketing team puts into a PowerPoint presentation.
It’s what customers conclude after dealing with you.
The strongest brands aren’t merely communicated consistently.
They’re experienced consistently.
Listen to Episode 14
If this has you quietly examining your customer journey and wondering what horrors might be lurking between “Thank you for your order” and the invoice, have a listen to Episode 14 of The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing.
Customer Experience Is the New Advertising – Why Your Customers Have Become Your Marketing Department explores why marketing doesn’t stop when somebody becomes a customer.
In many respects, that’s when the most important part begins.
It explores reviews, recommendations, customer service and why a genuinely great experience can achieve something even the cleverest advertising campaign struggles to manufacture: Advocacy.
Promises To Keep
Marketing makes promises.
It creates expectations and gives people reasons to choose you.
It says: “Come this way. We think you’ll like what happens next.”
But eventually the advertising stops.
The salesperson leaves the meeting.
And the customer actually has to experience the business.
That’s the moment that matters.
You can say you’re helpful.
Responsive.
Customer-focused.
You can even put it in enormous letters on the office wall.
But none of it matters if the experience says something different.
Your marketing makes the promise.
Your customer experience has to keep it.
When it does, customers come back. They recommend you. They become advocates.
Eventually, they start making promises about your business on your behalf:
“You should speak to these people.”
“They’ll look after you.”
“They’re really good.”
And no advertising campaign you’ve ever created will be quite as powerful as that.
