The Changing Face of Marketing

I have recently done two local presentations on the changing face of marketing and there's been a lot of lightbulbs going off in the audience - so I thought I'd share some insights with you.

One upon a time marketing was relatively straightforward, you held all the cards.  You had some flyers or brochures probably a simple website and maybe a mailing list. But for today’s more savvy and cynical buyers that old style marketing of brochures, mailings and website no longer works so effectively.  According to recent surveys:

• We bin 44% of Direct Mail entirely unopened
• 86% of us skip through television ads
• 84% of 25 to 34 year olds click out of a website because of an irrelevant or intrusive ad 
• As of February 2012, 17 million of us in the UK had registered with the Telephone Preference Service so that we don’t get unsolicited calls

      And….if you’re behaving like that… why wouldn’t your potential customers be doing 

      the same.

      If as purchasers, we don’t like the old methods what are we doing? 

     Imagine that Fred needs some marketing help:

He ask his personal contacts and gets the following responses– “There’s a really helpful blog I’m following”  There’s this great video I saw recently” ”One of my contacts on LinkedIn has lots of recommendations”

He asks his social media contacts:"My accountant’s marketing company is brilliant”

He looks on the internet: – one company has a video and a blog which has raised their SEO so that they come up on page 1.  On their website he finds helpful case studies and advice.  He signs up for their newsletter…

Now, I’m pretty sure that some of you will be a bit cynical about the amount of online references in those scenarios so, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me I’d like to share some more stats with you.

                   In 2013  73% of UK Adults accessed the internet every day

In 2013, 72% of all adults bought goods or services online, up from 53% in 2008

By the way those stats have not come from anyone with a vested interest but from the Office of National Statistics.

So WHY have we changed the way we look before we buy.  There are three main reasons:

1. The Internet has changed the game - there are now alternate methods for finding, researching and buying
2. We live in an increasingly cynical world where we think "people who sell things will do anything for a sale"
3. Social media has transformed our ability to communicate and connect and its now online that validations and recommendations are happening every day.

On top of this, in a fast paced world, if you’re looking for information you want it NOW – so you are probably looking at your mobile phones to access the internet.What’s more you don’t want sales spiel - the information that you seek needs to be relevant so that it informs and assists you. 

If YOU are doing that, why wouldn’t your prospective customers be doing the same?

So my advice is this:

• Make sure your website is responsive – i.e. works on people’s mobile phones
• Create good helpful content for your target market
• Share your expertise in places where your target market is looking

Just like the companies you are buying from

If this has been of interest you might also want to check out: 

What is Content Marketing and How to do Content Marketing which works




Thanks to Ed Yourdon on Flickr for the pic