Marketing: Helping others is good business

Helping others achieve their own business or personal goals, and to fulfil their needs and wants is good business.

I have always advocated the view that when we help others succeed, we also help ourselves.

While that sentiment might seem trite, and perhaps more suited to a greeting card than a real life business, a real life example bears it out as true.

Jackie Danicki of the very informative The Big Blog Company had just such an experience. It was from the negative side of the coin.

While attending an art exhibit in Los Angeles, California, Jackie experienced some anti-marketing in action.

Jackie describes the action:

I asked the manager - who pounced on me as soon as I entered, which I hate - if my friend could take my photo inside the store. “No,” he replied, in a tone that suggested that he had mistaken me for a retarded child. “We want people to buy the prints, not take pictures of them.”

If this guy thinks he’s selling more prints by limiting peoples’ ability to spread the word about them, I want to know what he’s smoking. The real kicker? There are multiple websites where the images of the prints can be easily downloaded in various sizes. So I can do that, but I can’t take a picture of myself with a print and post it to my blog, along with a link to the artist’s site, thus increasing the chance of him selling some of his work - which, in addition to the prints, includes a whole line of licensed merchandise. Bad business decision, dude. I’ll let one of the artist’s images speak for me, because it really does say it all.

I agree wholeheartedly with Jackie. The manager of the art store, by preventing photographs being taken with individual pieces of art, was actually hurting potential sales dramatically.

Obviously, the manager had never heard of blogs and their marketing power.

At the same time, he was also blissfully unaware of the well known word of mouth advertising and free publicity. I thought those concepts were basic sales and marketing knowledge.

I guess not.

Instead of denying Jackie the opportunity to photograph herself with a humourous painting, the manager should have done all he could to have assisted her.

Instead of preventing the photography, he would have benefited himself, and his artist clients, by offering to place the paintings in the ideal location and the best possible lighting.

Rather than gain some powerful free publicity and free advertising, not to mention goodwill, the store manager achieved precisely the opposite effect.

He failed to help other achieve their goals, and as a result, lessened greatly his chances of reaching his own. The artists selling their paintings were done a major disservice.

Instead of holding back your assistance, provide it.

Help others get what they want, and you will help yourself in the long run.

They say what goes around, comes around.

In this case, that old adage was sadly proven to be very true.

Tags: marketing, sales, success, helping others.