Stage Two's blog

It’s no secret that over the last fifteen years or so, marketing has become increasingly complicated as more and more channels and levels of interaction have been introduced by the Internet. In fact, though the basic backbone of principles for reaching customers has remained, marketing itself has evolved into an entirely different, more intelligent, more demanding beast than it was a mere 20 years ago.

Marketing professionals now have more to do than they ever did before, more frequently, and with less preparation time. The upside is that marketers can now engage with customers much more directly and on a wider scale, but this new power comes at the expense of time, energy and requires a supreme understanding of each new nuanced tool the Internet provides.

20 years ago if you wanted to keep your brand current and in the minds of your customers you:

• Had a billboard
• Updated your brochure only when your product changed (which wasn’t very often)
• Had print, radio and TV spots that could last for months or even years.
• If you were really adventurous you sent out a newsletter every few months.

10 years ago you:

• Had a website that functioned statically, much like an online billboard with a bit more information about your company.
• Had to consider how much online vs print exposure you should have
• Sent out email as well as paper newsletters
• Faxed stuff (maybe – we’re still not sure about this whole “fax” thing)

5 years ago you:

• Started (or considered) a blog to go along with your website and started updating once every few days.
• Listed yourself on Yelp/Craigslist/LinkedIN/etc
• Began looking into SEO and wondered if social networking sites could help you get the word out about your product.
• Oh, and you didn’t get to stop sending out newsletters or advertising in the paper or having a billboard, you still had to worry about all those things too. But definitely no more faxing.

Today you must:

• Manage a Facebook page along with perhaps several other profiles, all the while wondering if there is a better way to leverage these sites
• Update your blog regularly with compelling content as well as immediately respond to news in your industry that affects your consumers
• Post on Twitter about that latest blog entry and all the news about your product, and gain a Twitter following and monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand
• Keep up on SEO, optimize SEM
• Send that newsletter and analyze the engagement it yields
• Get that iPhone app up
• Monitor your Google alerts
• Make that widget…
• and you can’t forget about you Yelp reputation and all your traditional advertising.

But beyond the sheer amount of work required to keep up with all these new channels and platforms, there are marketing challenges that occur in the dynamic of the information age. For instance, how do you stand out from all the noise? How do you compete with so much other information, some of it from your competitors, for user attention? Consumers today see more advertisements, receive more messages, juggle so much more information than they ever have before. This kind of environment demands that your product the memorable, sticky and relevant or it will be lost to the ever flowing current of noise.

Also, not all engagement with your target is equal. How do you determine the value of engagement in the interactive space? For some companies, having aFacebook page with a hundred fans measures a high level of engagement with the brand. For others this a formality at best. The same questions arise from all other social media environments. What is the value of a follower on Twitter? Or the power of a positive tweet by satisfied customer? How much interaction with an app is enough to make a lasting impression?

All the free tools the Internet offers do not create a strategy, an experienced marketing professional does.  All the different types of engagement does not bring you a string of customers, but learning from that engagement can. Blogging does not create an audience, but positioning and messaging can. Now more than ever, companies need a team of professionals that can guide them through the crowded media landscape and make sure they stand out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.