Oh Where, Oh Where has my Marketing Gone…

Traditional marketing has many faults that result in its depreciation over recent years. One of the main reasons its continuing to lose steam is that modern day marketers are finding online campaigns and social media interactions easier to slap an ROI sticker on at checkout.  The effectiveness of print advertising, trade shows and other traditional means of marketing your products is further hampered by a decided lack of means in this department.

With online metrics, such as website traffic that can be narrowed down into lead conversions, which in turn can be narrowed down to new customers, gives marketers the power to allocate marketing dollars to areas that are generating revenue more accurately than ever before.

Measurement At the Speed of a Mouse

Previously, marketers sat months to determine whether appearing in a traditional advertising spot was effective.  If they were anything like our family’s manufacturing company, they sat and measured the multiple phone numbers and mailbox addresses used for each ad, and desperately tried and identify some return being gained.  Multiple phone numbers dedicated to individual advertising campaigns was innovative at that time.  It created a point A to point B analytic system that lacked justification of marketing.

Now, you can know immediately how many visitors, leads, prospects and customers  a recent campaign is generating and, if it’s not comparable to previous efforts, switch gears or change tactics within days, even hours. This gives companies a new form of adaptability which is becoming crucial in remaining relevant in today’s market.

This immediacy of reporting is allowing those who take advantage of the industrial marketing revolution to pull ahead of their more tra

ditional counterparts by making faster, better informed marketing and promotional decisions.

Migration of the Masses

If there’s one big lesson for marketers in this recent turn of events, it’s that the old forms of marketing have been under-performing for quite some time now and should not be tolerated as the primary part of your all-important media mix.

To stay loyal to a trade journal or direct mailing company (as many industrial companies do) simply because you’ve been doing business with them for decades is charity, not capitalism. If an advertising stream has dried up, don’t keep going back to the same well but, instead, try to find a new (revenue) stream!

As a marketer, you must be prepared to think differently about your approaches to connecting with customers, prospects and markets. Even before our recent economic problems hit, marketing was already and steadily trending away from traditional media such as printed trade journals and in-person trade shows, and toward interactive web media such as online search, e-newsletters, virtual events and banner advertising. Today, content based assets are a critical elements to any successful marketing campaign.  Throw in social media, and we’re in the midst of a revolution.