"Happy Mother's Day!" or "I spent 19 hours in labor and all I got was this crummy URL"

Mother’s Day is around the corner, and I’m very grateful to Godaddy.com for reminding me. Nonetheless, I’m probably not going buy a website for my 74-year-old mom who still doesn’t quite grasp email. Nor would I trust my 12-year-old daughter to select a domain for me. (Overprotectivemom.com? iphonedenier.net? I think not.)

This is not the only laughably inappropriate Mother’s or Father’s Day email I’ve received. Others include Staples, the Corelle outlet store and – I kid you not – continuing legal education classes.

As a communications consultant for businesses and organizations, the first questions I ask a new client are “who are your audiences?” and “what do you want to communicate to them?”

I’m not saying that people who happen to be parents don’t like factory second dishes. But when you begin with your product and figure out a way to shoehorn in the customer from there, you can end up looking out of touch or, at worst, alienating your customers.

It’s one thing if you’re a large retail chain, but if you’re in a service business or run a smaller – particularly local – operation, every communiqué with your clients affects the way you’re perceived. And clients want to know you think of their needs first.

How do you do this right? Well, let’s take the example of one Long Island small business. Celtic Quest Fishing in Port Jefferson posted on its Facebook page this week that all moms ride for free on Mother’s Day. Who is their audience? People who like to fish who want to do something nice for their moms on Mother’s Day. This offer gives them the opportunity to share a favorite hobby with their moms at no additional cost. They get to fish, mom gets a free boat ride, and most of all, the family spends a nice day together on the water.

Sure beats spending the day on your computer, designing Momsbestcakepops.com.