It doesn’t matter how well you know your 5Ps, your SEO or PPC, a Google certification or even a CIM qualification – if there’s one thing that’s of real old-fashioned marketing value these days it is this – manners!
Now it may be cool to say “Hey” these days, much like it’s the American version of shouting “Oi” at someone before any other words come out, but then launching straight into “do this, do that” etc. is just one thing – rude.
As a Brit of a certain age (Generation X), I was brought up to “mind my Ps and Qs”. I still do. I may start with the occasional “Hi” and where I remember, a “Hello”, but never “Hey”.
And then there are the introductory pleasantries – “how are you?”, “did you have a good weekend?”, “how was your holiday?” I’ve heard a lot of commentary along the lines of “what’s it got to do with you?” these days, and, of course, maybe some people do sound insincere when asking polite questions, and that’s another matter. But isn’t it just nice to ask how someone is before getting down to the nitty gritty?
The reason I ask is because manners don’t stop at the hello stage. They matter just as much in between and on the way out too.
Every marketer worth their salt understands the importance of a good onboarding experience; We map the customer journey, obsess over first impressions, and A/B test welcome emails until they’re perfect. Somewhere along the way, though, a lot of businesses seem to have decided that the same level of care and interest doesn’t apply to the middle and the end – No ongoing niceness, no sign-off, no thank you. Aren’t manners a key part of building relationships and trust? I think so, very much.
And ultimately, it’s such a strange thing for an industry built on the idea that every touchpoint along the user journey shapes how people feel. A brand’s reputation isn’t just built on how it greets people, it’s built on the continuity of pleasantness and even how it lets them go, too. If you care to ask anyone who’s ever been unsubscribed, ghosted by a supplier, or shown the door without so much as a courteous note, you’ll find that the ending is what they remember, not the years of good work that came before it.
I mention this because I’ve just seen it happen at a local business. A mishandled round of redundancies resulted in a sudden system lockout and no chance for those who lost their jobs to send an all-staff email, no MS Teams message, no chance to say a proper goodbye to people they’d worked alongside for a good while. Just locked out. It’s a peculiar thing to see at an organisation that is built on and prides itself on relationships.
But maybe that’s the real lesson here, generational or not – Manners cost nothing. And yet they say everything. If you want people to speak well of you after they’ve gone, whether they’re customers, colleagues, or clients, the least you can do is let them leave with a sincere “thank you” and a proper goodbye. And don’t get me started on the potentially sarcastic “thanks” versus a heartfelt “thank you”, again, that’s for another day!
But manners.
It really isn’t that hard.
And it’s certainly not old-fashioned. It’s just good marketing.