Social media is a big part of business nowadays for a lot of people, as generating traction and leads through a viral video of sorts could be very profitable. It gives you more exposure to reach a new audience, or at the same time, you could use it as a way to show your knowledge in the industry. And this is what got me thinking as I was watching some funny clips where it seems like there are some small businesses making little skits about the unreasonable demands and requests of customers many times, especially when they’re unknowledgeable about a particular topic. For example, in a lot of tech-related spaces, when it comes to things like filming, people think it’s like a five-dollar job. For example, they think someone filming with their phone is the same thing as someone with a professional camera.
In these skits, they’re essentially making fun of the customer, and it seems to get a positive response overall, especially from people who are not in any way looking for the service. They can just relate in a different way, but it makes you wonder: is that a good idea for your business in a social media age to make fun of your customers in a light-hearted way, or the potential customers? Because on one end, you could argue that the old mentality of “the customer is always right,” and you should never make fun of them anyway, would be a disaster, especially if you did it in person. But in this case, for a skit and marketing purposes, would you think that’s a good idea?
I know for myself, I wouldn’t personally think of the business in a negative light if they did something like that. If anything, again, it’s kind of relatable and it might actually make you gravitate towards the business because you will tend to think they’re knowledgeable about it, and since they’re going through all this, when you enter as a customer, you’re more likely not to do that.
It makes you wonder if that’s good too, in terms of a strategy, in terms of filtering out certain types of people. You don’t want people that are going to, let’s just say, penny-pinch you, or come in with an attitude of how they know everything when in reality they don’t.