Have you taken a look at this yet? It takes a second to load, but it is a mini version of my site - sylphmarketing.com

I received an email today that alerted me of some reward points I can cash in for an account that I have. I decided to go ahead and click through to see what my options were as I was pleasantly surprised at how many points I had accumulated. I was even more delighted to realize 20,000 points weren’t totally worthless.

20,000 points, which I think took me roughly 5 months to accumulate, would get me a fifty dollar gift card or other items valued around there. I don’t have to spend anything more and there were no charges to receive this gift. I was aware of this program when opening this account, but it didn’t sell me on the account. I was all ready to sign up anyway. What this has done is assure me that it is beneficial for me to do business with this company and make me feel like I have made a good decision.

I am the kind of consumer that re-evaluates my accounts on a regular basis to see if I could have it better somewhere else. I’m not shopping for insurance every 6 months, but if I find a charge on a statement that I was not expecting, I make a mental note of it. If it happens again, I research the difference between the service I thought I was receiving and for what I am actually paying.

Even if I have a clear understanding of the agreement at that point, I will start looking for a service that offers what I thought was once mine. I do have a limited amount of patience when it comes to searching for alternatives. Obviously the internet is key for quick searches. If it is still difficult to find any other options, I’ll abandon the idea for the time being. Still, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, I could have it so much better.

I think back to the first digital camera I purchased over 10 years ago. It was a $500 Olympus. I bought it so I could research this new technology, and as an added bonus, I had 30 days to return it. That was a big selling point for me at the time because I was a student and because I didn’t have to concern myself with being out that much money and stuck with a bad decision.

It was great. I still have some of the pics from that camera on my computer today. Ahh, but that was the catch I wasn’t aware of at the time. I needed a computer. Well a roommate had one of those, so I’d just load what I had taken on there and transfer it to disk for later use. It seems archaic now, to think that I would even purchase a digital camera when I didn’t have a computer, but I wasn’t aware enough of where the technology was taking us.

Digital cameras were marketed to me as a way for amateur photographers to eliminate the waste of film. You could get a preview of the pics and delete the ones you did not want. With that in mind, I thought I was purchasing a camera that housed film and transferred the digital images that I accepted to film. That was not the case. So as I was showcasing the new technology that I wielded it became very evident to me and everyone I spoke to, that it really was a waste for me to have this camera without a computer.

Now the idea of what I thought I was purchasing, that I had clearly convinced myself of, had me thinking what if I could have it so much better with another camera? So I started to do research on other cameras to see which had this great technology. I wasn’t too happy to find that none of them did, so I returned my camera and paid my rent with the refund. There was no harm done and I was able to properly educate myself on the uses of digital cameras and how a computer was necessary. Please keep in mind that this was over ten years ago, before you could walk into your neighborhood drug store and load a disk into an instant photo printing machine.

Now I was young and my expectations got the better of me in that instance, even though it did work out for me. I learned a free lesson. Over time, I have become a consumer who researches more and buys impulsively less.

As marketers, we love to take advantage of all of the great selling points of our products. We try to build up confidence in the product for the consumer. Too often though, we miss the mark on informing consumers what they can really expect, especially when it comes to technology; and especially when it comes to attracting older consumers who may be weary of what they are purchasing. Remember, they have been taught by us to be weary. Because we advertise everything as being so great and easy - even when it is not. They’ve been burnt before. They need reassurance that they really could have it so much better.

Marketing with Virtue,

Harry Acosta
Sole Proprietor
Sylph, Llc.
sylph@woway.com
sylphmarketing.com