OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Is Marketing Obsolete?

Optimizing Your Impact with Jeff Schomay

“Marketing.”

How do you define that word? Obviously everyone knows what it means, but it seems marketing ain’t what it used to be. In the good old days you go out, buy your advertising, and wait to see who comes. Now that we have an internet full of eager consumers, a company can send out millions of directly targeted interactive advertisements with an auto-generated response system and an automated purchasing and cross-selling system with a built-in remunerative affiliate sales program for less cost than what it takes to send out 100 postcards in the mail.

But that’s not all, the things that worked just a year ago – affiliate programs, “squeeze pages”, fancy websites with e-commerce technology – are being largely ignored today, thanks to the proliferation of online social networking platforms. I’ve heard that YouTube broadcasts more user-generated content in one year than all of the TV and radio stations have sent out combined since they day they were invented. People are literally canceling the newspaper and turning off the TV and firing up their web-browsers and aggregate news readers (RSS). And the advertisers who used to use radio, TV, magazines, and newspapers are noticing and hurting.



So again the question – is marketing as we know it obsolete?

To answer, we need to step back and look at what marketing really is. My simple definition: Letting people know you have something to sell. That’s all marketing is; radio, TV, print, direct mail, internet, social networks, sky-writing, etc. are all just tools used for letting people know you have something to sell. And that means the principles are the same for each tool, and it means you better have a strong grasp on the principles if you want to use the tools effectively and make an impact.



Let’s step through the principles quickly.

First off, you can’t market anything if you don’t have anything to sell. What are you selling? Careful, that’s a trick question. A chiropractor doesn’t sell spinal adjustments, he sells comfort. Coke doesn’t sell a flavored, carbonated beverage, they sell refreshment. And the ipod isn’t a fancy portable music player, it’s a machine that provides a soundtrack to your life.

The lesson: don’t ask what you are selling, ask what your market is buying and why they would buy it from you. Come from their perspective and you’ll know what to sell them.



Now that you know what you are selling, how will you market it? I think there are only two things you need to accomplish in marketing:

• Get your message in front of as many eyes as possible, and
• Get those eyes to pay attention to your message

If you have the best message in the world, but no one sees it, is it marketing?

Where should you start? There are tons of places to market:

· Face to face (direct presentation, networking, word of mouth, etc.)

· Advertising through media (TV, radio, magazine, newspaper, etc.)

· Online advertising (web presence, social networking, “ezines’, pay-per-click, etc.)

· Direct mail (both physical and e-mail)

· Outdoor (billboards, signs, transportation, venue, sky-writing, etc.)

· Awareness and information (business cards, flyers, brochures, etc)

· Sponsorship, endorsement, associate and affiliate

· More? (Hire bald people to let you write your message on the back of their head and tell them to ride the bus all over town?)

Ultimately, the areas you use will depend on who you want to reach and what is most fitting, and also fits into an overall cohesive strategy of hitting your target audience from multiple arenas with the same message (they say you have to hear something up to 7 times before you take action, not to mention different people learn in different ways).



If your message reaches a million people, but no one listens, is it really marketing?

Now for the part most people forget to do – make a message that sings! Make it snap, make is sizzle. Make an impact. Figure out how to best present what you are really selling (remember?) so that it:

· Gets noticed

· Gets people’s interest/draws them in

· Gets the results/resonse you want

This is easier said than done and a professional can really shine here, but the basic idea is to approach everything from the buyer’s point of view and what’s in it for them, catch them with something that snaps and back it up with value, and always ask “how can I say this better?” Using visuals, making it fun, making it interactive, making it clear, concise, and interesting will always help “inspire your buyer.” It’s an art and a craft, and it’s too important to skimp on, because marketing that people don’t listen to is marketing that didn’t work.



So… what does all of this mean?

No, marketing is not obsolete. Some of the tools work better than others, but no matter what approach you have, analyze which tools will work best for what you want to achieve, use them to get in front of eyeballs, and most importantly (ever increasingly more so with the human-driven nature of web 2.0) present your message in the most interesting, valuable, and intriguing way to make an impact!



Good luck and good marketing,



Jeff Schomay



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Written by Jeff Schomay

Inspire Your Buyer - Branding and Marketing

Optimize Your Impact. Get Better Results.

www.Inspire-Your-Buyer.com

jeff@inspire-your-buyer.com

(c) 2009

Jeff Schomay is an expert brander and marketer and a professional film writer and director.

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OPTIMIZING YOUR IMPACT: Is Marketing Obsolete?