The Old Ways of Marketing – Push ME
The marketing paradigm is undergoing a dramatic shift. Many players, formally confident of “what works”, have found themselves set adrift on an ocean of doubt and ineffectualness. The old ways don’t work any longer.
Don’t get me wrong, plenty of marketers are still trying in vain to push their marketing messages at us consumers just like the old times. They even keep trying their old ways on that new-fangled internet thingie.
But as a digital media producer who works with small businesses, I hear the same refrain from clients, “nothing is working; print, direct mail, broadcast, nothing”. Yet they still get pitched by ad salespeople with the same old, same old; print ads, direct mail, broadcast solutions. Many times old media is bought simply out of habit, “we’ve always done the Ad Pack.”
As I explain constantly, consumers only had a few channels to get their info from in the good old days; their local newspaper, radio or TV station. The deal with those channels was, look/listen/watch my advertisements, and I’ll show you the entertainment stuff you want.
The Marketing Paradigm Shift
Today, consumers have thousands of channels to get their info/entertainment from. It’s called the internet. With intelligent search engines and social channels available to them, consumers can hunt down the content they want about a product or service, when they want to consume it and in the form the want it; video being the most preferred form (after all, YouTube is the 2nd most popular search engine).
And they can acquire their content anytime of the day or night. It’s the Web – what I want, when I want it, and I’ll skip/ignore/delete anything I didn’t ask for.
The old PUSH marketing model is falling by the wayside. Don’t believe me? Just count the direct mail pieces you pitch at home and the office. How many unwanted emails did you delete each day or websites you left cause they didn’t give you the info you asked for right away.
People want what they want, and don’t want what they didn’t ask for. Keep pushing your marketing elements (ME) at prospects and all you’re doing is annoying them and creating a bad impression for your brand.
The New and Effective Marketing Paradigm – Pull ME
The new, more effective marketing paradigm is the Pull ME model (also known as Inbound Marketing). In this model, product and service providers create visually engaging, interactive online content about their product or service for the consumer.
They leverage social media channels and SEO to inform prospects of this content’s availability. The consumer then pulls the content to their display system. The value transaction from the point of view of the prospect is; I give to you, Mr. Vendor, some of my precious viewing time and you give me some in-depth, visually stimulating information about your product or service that’ll enable me to make an informed choice about your product/service.
If I don’t get the knowledge value for my viewing time, I’ll never look at your stuff again. If I do get the knowledge value, you’ll become one of my trusted knowledge sources, and I’m most likely to buy from you. Every time you fulfill that value transaction, my trust relationship with you is strengthened. And I, the consumer, only buy from sources I trust.
Converting to a Pull model of marketing is not additive on the expense sheet, and should not increase a business’s annual marketing budget one penny. It’s simply a reallocation of existing marketing dollars away from what’s not working (old push media) to the newer, more personal and effective Pull media, i.e multimedia enhanced web assets, strategic search engine and social media programs.
The new marketing paradigm is a lot like dating; wait to be asked, make the best impression, be fun and entertaining, never lie, and always do what you say you’re going to do. Believe it or not, there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of consumers looking right now for what you offer. They want to discover you on their own or by having a friend of theirs refer you to them and they want you to impress them when they do find you.
Do that and you’ll have a life long relationship!
Do you want to incorporate better inbound marketing strategies? We can help, contact us today to get started!