Scalejacking and Proactive Marketing

Why proactively market? 

Your customers are tired of being treated like a faceless number by your marketing efforts. You cast a wide net and hope you catch a few fish...this is scarcity mentality on both ends of the equation. You are happy with a few leads and you think that the targets you seek are so unimportant that you cannot do one damn thing specific to them. 

You hope your blast e-mails, your trade show booth, your ad, or your web page is so convincing that potential customers see that they absolutely need you, have to have whatever product feature you are highlighting, and will contact you.  You hope to grab enough of their attention for them to self-filter from the masses and you luck into a few sales.  

I recently read on  SethGodin’s blog about a term coined by David Balter called 'scalejacking'.  He defined this as trying to grab a lot of attention broadly and then letting the members caught in this ‘net’ filter down so you can profit. This is a weak approach and will be sniffed out more and more as customers get more cynical and self-regulating.  Weak crap won't cut it in the world of product marketing anymore.

Think highly enough of your potential customers that you actually think about them and their needs and how your unique proposition will be received by them.