The world of digital marketing is all about change, innovation, invention and a lot of hot air.
Trends come and go like trains and buses, but out of these trends and fads, there is the occasional diamond that glistens in the mire, a diamond that shines so bright that you know you have a duty to shine it up and tell the world about it.
The problem is the decision maker.
Last month was particularly frustrating.
In August I had board level discussions about the merits of Social Media, and why and how it has be controlled, directed and planned.
And so after three board meetings, the directors came up with a total of three tweets to feed out to their client base. I tried to explain that three tweets in a month won’t be driving an awful lot of traffic or creating buzz for the company, but that’s corporate Social Media for you.
Earlier in the month I spoke to a Marketing Manager about Google’s offerings and how they are vital to the marketing mix, especially in an era when online interaction is moving to mobile devices.
Sales of PCs are through the floor as everyone surfs and searches on mobile devices. A whole new industry of mobile marketing has sprung up with some notable successes among early adopters.
But back to the marketing manager; I’m not saying this marketing manager is still living in the 20th Century, but I will say that with a degree in pocket, the learning process seems to have ceased and this person is steeped in ideas that ceased to work many years ago. There seems to be little fluidity in the marketing stance and even the Social Media communications belong to a bygone age.
There have been moments in August.
Like the time when I spoke to the marketing manager of a National Institution to let her know that the Centre that they had spent a lot of money promoting was actually listed on Google Places as being ‘Closed or Gone Away’. After a bit of humphing and harring she came up with some implausible reason for this and said she would deal with it immediately.
As to the optimisation of the Google+ Local page, this still remains untouched and the organisation still hasn’t claimed the listing as their own.
I haven’t even bothered to broach the subject of their abysmal online reputation and bad reviews.
Is it just the North East or is there a general lassitude and laissez-faire attitude among some marketing personnel today?
Has the Holy Grail of Marketing or the Silver Bullet to company success been given to these people on the strict understanding that it will only work if they ignore advice given by ‘outsiders’?
My corporate marketing experience goes back to the good old days of having £500,000 annual marketing budgets, when hiring a helicopter to fly clients who purchased a £40.00 a month media package was a ’good move’.
Today the landscape, and my attitude, has changed; every bit of marketing spend in our credit-crunch times has to show a positive ROI –eventually.
I add the term eventually because it is acceptable to sell a product or service at a loss provided that you know the metrics for the customer; if you have the CLV (customer lifetime value) figures, you can quickly work out how much you can spend to acquire them in the first place.
The last thing you should cut when times are tough is your marketing spend. Good marketing leads to sales, and that leads to good hard cash in the bank.
And now more than ever, cash is king.
Bootstrapping a business – i.e. starting and running a business with minimum costs is an attractive proposition, but once you try to grow you do find that spending is inevitable to climb further up the ladder of success, and sometimes economising at the start can delay growth.
How did September start?
With the schools going back and the holidays fading in the memory just like the tan fades from the skin, we have the run up to Christmas. Brick and mortar retailers must be dreading this period if they haven’t got a strategy to either combat or complement the online sales machines.
We are re-inventing yet again to cope with the new mentality of the post-crunch Britain.
‘Marketing in the new economy’ is our mission and that includes highly effective marketing systems and widgets that the majority of companies out there have never even heard of, let alone tried to deploy properly.
We have given up trying to teach in-house marketers and business development personnel the right way to maximise their brand and presence.
Instead we will focus on working with the companies who like to see their profits rise and pay us accordingly, while their competitors flounder and try to play catch-up.
For example we have just finished a project with a small company who now absolutely dominate the web in their marketplace; outperforming some really big players, British Gas included. Our marketing intervention has generated over £30,000.00 in additional sales in just over two months.
It’s going to be a great end to the year.
Especially if you work with us.