Online marketing has truly transformed how we do business. However, there are some dinosaur marketers who dubbed it a fad or simply don’t find online marketing as interesting as traditional mediums (a la Mad Men). The following are a few thoughts regarding this game-changing phenomenon and predictions for those who fail to embrace it.
Online Marketing Asteroid
Dinosaurs didn’t see it coming either. They had survived 150 million years before a catastrophic event occurred 65 million years ago. While there are a myriad of extinction theories as to why (asteroid impact, disease, climate change, volcanic eruption), the simple truth is that 70% of the earth’s species didn’t make it. Natural history aside, is your business a dinosaur? Are your marketing partners clutching at tried-and-true but dying media? Will they drag your company down with their own death proclaiming they have all the answers until the bitter end?
According to Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of PR 20/20, the marketing industry is being redefined. Only those agencies that are nimble, tech savvy, open and collaborative are going to make it. In his book The Marketing Agency Blueprint he wrote “digital services will be ingrained into the DNA of every agency, and blended with traditional methods to execute integrated campaigns.”
Trends Ignored
Whole industries are denying reality, banking that progress will reverse itself (or hoping they’ll see the error of its ways). Books are still mainly published on paper. So are newspapers, and yearbooks. Yet, digital media is nipping at their heels. Some pundits predict that newspapers will be dead in a decade. Our prediction? People will always want to read books. How they read them, however, is rapidly changing.
Amazon disrupted the marketplace by unveiling the Kindle device. Traditional bookseller Barnes & Noble had to scramble to catch-up. But Amazon wasn’t satisfied nor did they ignore the advent of other tablet devices.Their response? The Kindle app that works on Android and Apple tablet products and SmartPhones. Now they are changing how authors publish their material, eliminating traditional publishing houses. They’re also capitalizing on their cloud server network, offering back-up services to businesses large and small.
Multi-Channel ADD
Like it or not, consumer behavior is changing (maybe even encouraging Attention Deficit tendencies). It’s not uncommon for TV viewers to also have a second screen open (SmartPhone, tablet, laptop) while watching their favorite programs. TechCrunch predicts that the second screen will affect the entire TV ecosystem and it’s going to be a multi-billion market. Consumers will continue to watch movies and their favorite programs, but how they watch it is evolving. Networks and movie studios are having to adapt, because the distribution mediums are changing. And changing rapidly.
Now What?
Again, how do all these trends affect your business? What are you doing to capitalize on these opportunities (or at least mitigate irrelevance)? We all use digital mediums in our daily lives, more than some of us realize. If you don’t think so, how are you reading this? Regardless of what your company is selling or manufacturing, you must have a digital imprint or risk being marginalized. You can do it yourself. However you risk getting results similar to cutting your own hair without the right tools. Besides the techy tools, online marketing takes objectivity.
So, what trends are you seeing? Any thoughts on how Don Draper would have embraced LinkedIn?
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You’re so right that marketing dinosaurs are going extinct. Every once in awhile one of them will rear its head and try to use old-school “push” marketing. On Twitter, they broadcast without engaging–spouting their own message over and over without listening to their possible clients. But, more and more, that type of marketeer is being laughed right out of business. The ones who really “get it” are those who are willing to have two-way conversations with clients.
Another thing I’ve noticed a lot lately is print companies trying to join in the digital space. They are pushing social media, but still use social media as a broadcast medium. There are a lot of latecomers to the party trying to figure out the new rules.
Thank you for an excellent post!