Humility: The dangers of marketing over-kill and presentation under-preparation

In a couple of days, we will receive participants’ reviews  of the content and ideas in Bill Caswell‘s Webinar, Taking Your Construction Business to the Next Level, but I know I must give myself a large “F” for preparation and testing.  I simply did not allow enough rehearsal time to fully understand the Webinar software, so when our guests were waiting for the program to begin, I fumbled over technical details and we couldn’t use all of DimDim’s functionality.

In the end, the event proceeded quite well, with Bill switching  to my computer, and he completed the presentation in a timely manner. After the event, Caswell said he didn’t enjoy the lack of face-to-face interaction with participants.  They could communicate by text messaging but, even though DimDim’s advanced software allows a second camera  and the ability to switch microphones, the rules of the game are different when people are located in many different locations (and in my rush to overcome the technical problems from lack of preparation, we couldn’t access these useful functions.)

I made another mistake, in the event’s advance marketing.  I tried out various types of event promotion software and went past the stage of reasonableness to overkill in repeated promotional messages.  One reader yesterday sent me his forthright opinion.  “I’m really getting tired of your repeated Caswell promotions,” he wrote.  Following up to my apology, I communicated:  “BTW, I truly appreciate this because it raises a question:  When is there “too much” marketing?”

His response:

In response to your question, as Seth Godin says, “It’s all about me….me,me,me.” Readers are only interested in themselves (myself included). I believe there is a frequency “line” you can cross by marketing too much. Below the line represents value to the consumer (because you are making me aware of the product) and above the line represents meaningless (you’re wasting my time) promotion. Each of us draw the line in a different place, but we do draw a line.

So, it seems I over-marketed the event, while under-preparing the technical aspects, leaving the presenter in a frustrating situation where he had to proceed in a framework of discomfort.  Will Bill Caswell ever want to do this sort of thing again?  Will I want to go forward with other Webinar-type programs in the future?

The answer, in part, is that if we don’t try new things and learn from them, we cannot grow. But you can never prepare too much and if you are using various marketing methods, you should never forget that even if they are readily available and easy to use, you should always respect the frequency and volume of messages you deliver.

Lessons learned . . .