7 New Marketing Tips for your Organization
Photo Credit: Bern@t
Today I received (again) another sales phone call. It was unpleasant and it wasted my time. The good side of it is that it gave inspiration for this blog post in which I give you some insights on
- What traditional marketing does and why it doesn’t work. Few concrete examples.
- What new marketing does and why it works. List of basic tips that you can take into action in your business/organization.
This post is a good second step for brands to start dipping their toes into new marketing after a first (and must) listening stage.
Why do certain brands are having a hard time selling their products?
Because they are doing traditional marketing. Yes they are on twitter, facebook, etc. but they are still pushing old school marketing through these channels.
Traditional marketing (some examples):
- Telephone sales calls like the one I received today
- TV & radio advertising
- Print ads in newspapers & magazines
- Buying databases lists for spammy email campaigns
You can tell me what you want but there’s one and only sure thing about such traditional marketing approaches: You can forget about customer acquisition. Simple and clear.
Traditional channels are really expensive and don’t really work well anymore. Why? Because of a cultural and technological change. Few examples of why the money you spend, as a brand, are mostly wasted:
- TV & radio: People are sick and tired of being interrupted by you and your ads. They use DVRs to skip TV ads and many are starting to listen to podcasts instead of listening to radio. (How many of you still love to watch ads on TV? Seriously, I don’t even watch TV anymore. My TV has turned into a 47′ LCD screen on which I watch video-podcasts and live online-video streaming).
- Print newspapers and magazines: Getting copies of your magazines means ending up with tons of paper that sooner or later will be thrown away. Instead people are starting to opt for nice RSS feeds that flow to their RSS reader. Or more targeted info from specific channels on twitter or facebook.
People simply want to check just what they want. Since these 20th century channels don’t give to the consumers this freedom, their position dropped down on the ranking list of sources used to get/search information about products and services able to satisfy consumer’s needs. Today your target audiences use the Internet as one of their primary channels and trust their peers better than the ads of faceless corporations.
New marketing (some basic tips you can start to implement right now in your company):
- Blogs. Easy and fast to set up, blogs are channels that give official voice to your organization. Wordpress, TypePad, Blogger are some of the most famous platforms (many others out there to choose from). My blog runs on Wordpress!
- Video. Probably one of the most effective channels you can use to create a human and transparent contact with your audience. I’m sure you heard about Youtube
- SEO (search engine optimization). This is really important since people are searching for solutions (AKA you) everyday more. Structuring your content in a way that attracts your target audience to your sites is a must.
- Increase interaction with customers and fans by offering them unique insight via company profiles on Facebook. (Become a fan of AndreaVascellari.com here if you fancy!)
- Build reputation on Linkedin through Q&A (questions & answers) and forum discussions on groups.
- Social news sites let you and your consumer spread your content. The best example that comes to my mind is Digg but there are many others/similar like Delicious etc.
- Build relationship on Twitter. I’m @vascellari (http://twitter.com/vascellari) on Twitter.
The list goes on and of course it changes according to your audience and most importantly to the objectives you have set in your plan (find more info about it in the links at the end of this post).
These new channels work exactly the other way around. They function in a completely different way by attracting and pulling people rather than bothering them pushing worthless info & ads like traditional models do.
All this is nothing without a plan! Please keep it in mind.
The focus of this post is more on a tactical level. Don’t forget your strategy. You must have a plan to coordinate your new marketing efforts. If you have no idea of what I’m talking about I suggest you to have a look at 2 other posts I wrote and that you might be interesting:
Communications Planning Guide: A step by step road map that will help in crafting your plans at strategic and tactical level.
Communications Plan: Strategy & Tactics: Helps you in understanding the difference between strategy and tactics. Way to many people still confuse or mix the two.
If you have something to add that you think might be useful to the community please go ahead and share it the comments, via Twitter (@vascellari), via Friendfeed or wherever else you prefer, just remember to link back to this post
Andrea
Author: Andrea Vascellari
Andrea Vascellari is the CEO of itive.net. All thoughts and opinions on this blog are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer or clients; neither past or present. If you liked this post feel free to follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or subscribe to this blog.
This is excellent advice, Andrea. More and more I’m talking with customers who are looking for different options. I was at a meeting yesterday with a client and we agreed to ditch a radio campaign which they’d run in the past after I helped build their community this year with Twitter, Facebook and a blog.
We asked the community what they thought of radio ads via a poll and they gave it a clear thumbs down.
This, to me, is how marketing and communication are developing for brands. You grow your audience with genuinely valuable content and build trust and then they will help you develop your brand because they believe in the services or product you develop.
Great post !
@Jon: Yes the audience plays an essential role in re-shaping and re-defining your communication channels. Thanks for sharing your story… + glad you liked the post