At It's Best Traditional Marketing Is a Wasteful Paradigm

I was chatting with clients all day today and although it's almost old-hat at this point, modern marketing strategies are still not mainstream.

There is still a lot of confusion regarding what marketing is and what it isn't. The traditional approach is that marketing and marketers are advertisers. The thinking is "I built the thing and now I want you to find people to buy it." It's not irrational, it's how business has been done for hundreds of years. There's a problem though ...

And this is where it gets muddy, because pre-1990s (maybe even 80s), like I said, that is exactly what you would have done. Find a Marketing Agency to help you choose which networks to advertise in and who would sell you radio, TV, and print media packages. More people would hear about your product, which would cause more to buy, which would allow you to invest in more advertising. It made, and still makes, agencies lots of money and for the most part it looks like it's working, because it is - but - is there a better way?

Let's fast forward to today ... there is so much noise out there that even if you have enough money to get in front of someone (8-12 times) there is a pretty good chance (98%) they won't care about the thing you are selling. In those rare cases (2%) you do find someone who is interested, there is still another chance they won't buy the thing you made. It's not that products aren't actually better, most of the time they are, but we have learned how to tune out the advertising. We may have even been burned once or twice by deals that were too good to be true. So, we're skeptical and trying to avoid your expensive advertising. (AdBlocker, Netflix, Hulu, Almost Every Free App Ever Created, etc.)

So, using the traditional marketing approach to selling your widget is going to cost an extraordinary amount of money in customer acquisition. If that wasn't enough you also basically have to start from zero every day. Of course - there will be some word of mouth, but by focusing your efforts on what I'm calling Traditional Marketing (press releases, digital, print, TV, and radio advertising) you are not garnering support for your product. You are interrupting people to try and sell them something. Usually it takes more time and money than most companies have to capture that kind of market share. I'm here to say - even if you DO capture that market share with Traditional Marketing - there is a better way.

The better way is more cost effective, kinder, gentler, and covers both short and long-term strategies. 

The basics of this new era in marketing is to focus on the customers you already have, give them the tools to share your company's products with others with as little friction as possible, and make something worth sharing.

I'll be sharing in as much detail as possible exactly how to transition from Traditional to Modern Marketing in future articles. If you'd like to come along on this journey to learn a new and better way to sell your products, services, and ideas - there's an email form somewhere on this page. You know what to do. ;)

All my best, sincerely - Colin