Or why the words “dicking around” appear on this website
Does profanity have a place in your marketing scheme? Hell yes.
With a caveat. If your clientele uses it, you’re safe.
Is it advisable?
Common sense would tell you no. Some people are offended, and offending people shrinks the pool of potential clients.
Let’s use Greenman for an example. I’ve done a lot of work for SmugMug customers. It’s thought that there are about a million of those. Narrow it down to the pros and I’ve heard anywhere from 20,000 on up. Which is likely way low.
Greenman needs maybe a hundred clients a year to make a go of this. That means we can easily offend 99,000 SmugMug customers and still have a thousand to choose from. Providing we can reach those thousand.
This is important. Anyone who does their homework about me will certainly find my website, A Gothic Curiosity Cabinet. In it I travel to creepy locations, write booze laden travel guides to haunted restaurants and accommodation, discuss witchcraft, paganism and the merits of various types of absinthe.
I’m not the go to guy for the moral majority.
But I certainly have anecdotal evidence that the occasional burst of profanity on the website actually attracts the right kind of people. We want to work with people like ourselves, and I’m a cantankerous bastard. Some would say cantankerous old bastard, but that neither hither nor thither.
Life’s short, too short to pretend to be someone you’re not. If you find yourself in a market where the occasional string of profanities doesn’t hurt who you’re trying to reach, curse away.
Just do it with class.
