Hockey-mask wearing villains? Things that go bump in the night? Clowns? Boring. What really scares us are neglected websites, Frankenspeak, and projects that suck the life right out of you.
On this Halloween day, we're sharing a fun infodoodle of what really scares marketers on Halloween.
In the infodoodle below, you can see what turns our hair white with fear and what makes us bite our fingernails down to the quick.
- The Haunted Website. Straight out of the 1990s, sites that feature too many animated GIFs, music, anything that blinks (or quite frankly, moves) strike terror into our hearts. Nothing says you don't give a flying bat like creating your online space and neglecting it.
- Ghosts of Failed Marketing Campaigns. Failure happens---but failure can be transformed into a learning experience. Yes, it sounds hokey and like what a losing team murmurs to itself in consolation, but it's true. Failure gets the best out of you when you stay haunted by the failure. Best to just face it, see why it failed, and then learn from it. Don't let past failures ruin future successes.
- Vampire of Life-draining Projects. We all have projects that suck the life out of us. Either they go on too long or they have grown fangs that bite into you and bleed you dry. Beware of projects that last too long, seem endless, or sound more beneficial than they really are.
- Just-Once Customers. Those customers fly by your business. They check out your website and never return. They buy your product and never buy another one. They listen to your talk and never come back.
- Frankenspeak. Frankenspeak, as Ann Handley dubbed it, is "is convoluted text that doesn’t sound like it was penned by a human, but instead sounds like it was created in a lab." And if you've watched horror films, you know that anything haphazardly slapped together in a lab will create havoc and destruction in its wake. Run far and fast from Frankenspeak!
- Stale, Mummified Content. Some companies create a piece of content and practically embalm it. Unchanged and under wraps, the content has the form of a human but has long lost its vitality. The content has never been re-imagined. What scares us is content that is presented by a company on every social channel in the exact same way.
- Lean Budgets. You can't write about scary things without discussing budgets. Marketers often ask how they can do this or that on their shoestring budgets. You can do a lot with a lean budget---but that doesn't mean you don't hold your breath, cross your fingers, and stress out a bit.
- Great Pumpkins of Unanalyzed Data. Sometimes, too much data can be overwhelming. Like pumpkins, they are heavy, hard to carry, and awkward to handle. Don't let yourself be crushed by too much data.
What other frightening creatures would you add to a marketer's Halloween?
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