Unless You Are Good

Marketing in any form, social media included, isn’t a savior. It won’t work unless you are any good at what it is your business does. It will work to some extent if you are anywhere from mediocre good to absolutely amazing good. But you really have to be good, and I am sorry if this excludes you. (since you are here reading I seriously doubt that.)

Take a computer repair shop.

You walk in with your dead windows machine, (I have a stack of them) and ask them to take a look at it. The guy tells you that it is $50 to diagnose the fatality, then they tell you how much to fix it. You need to leave it there for a few days and they will call you with details. You get the call and they tell you that E-Machines makes a really really really poor computer and that your power supply failed which short circuited the mother board. It will take $40 to get a power supply and a similar motherboard will be $50. You already paid him $50 and you decided that another $90 is better than losing the $50 and buying a new computer… so you pay $140 to repair a computer you paid $330 for 14 months ago even though the guy openly told you that it was a remarkably poorly made brand.

Unless they are Good.

It could go like this: You walk in and put your E-Machines down on the counter, the guy quickly scans it and asks what is wrong. You tell him the scenario, and he tells you that he will gladly test it while you wait, a few minutes later he comes back and tells you that he can fix it for $125 dollars, but since E-Machines are built with such crappy components he can not guarantee it at all. He then offers to sell you a much better HP machine that is used and for sale for $200 and he will guarantee it for six months, and charge only for replacement parts after that. You leave having spent $60 more, but getting $140 more in value than you did from the first guy, and you feel good about it. You vow to never buy a turd like an e-machines pc ever again and are happy with your new foster computer.

Marketing can really help the Second Guy.

This is just a little pep talk about doing right by your customer as your first article of business, after that lets talk about making you famous for it. I can do that, because I am good.

Thanks for reading, it was a pleasure getting this off my chest in a productive way. You feel the same way… right E-machines?

Ok why am I so mad at e-machines?

After the four dead PCs I bought for a POS system up there, I am not sure I need anything else, but here goes… I swore I would never buy another E-Machine, and when I recently won one in a raffle a few months ago I thought it was humorous.

You see I have a macbook, which I love, and I never really needed to use the desk top e-machine I won before now. So just this week I was setting up an office at my home and I decided to use it.  I have been using google docs and dropbox a lot and it would be there if I needed it. In addition I could connect it to my ps3 and watch videos and look at pics in my living room too. So today I hooked it up, and…

Well this is what I have had on my screen for the last 4 hours:

Anyway that is why I am so aggravated at e-machine, got any input for me? Comment here or @spirocks on twitter.