Old-school marketing is like comfort food. It’s familiar to you, but it may not be what you need.
In primary research I conducted a few years ago, 91% of my buyers first learned of my brand long before a sales and marketing engagement occurred. They weren’t sitting around waiting for me to give them a sales flyer.
Consider these stats:
- We check our phones 96 times a day (Asurion)
- 75% of all video plays are on mobile (eMarketer)
- 87% of shoppers begin product searches on digital channels (Salesforce)
- The average person deletes 48% of the emails they receive every day (Boomerang)
- 68% of B2B buyers want to do their own product research (Forrester)
Buyers are self-dependent. They’re way upstream before engagement occurs. They trust the info they gather vs. pushed to them. They’re not tethered to desktops and they’re not into reading long, flowing prose. By the time sales or marketing hits them, their decision is mostly-made.
If all of this is true…and it is…then why is a product flyer the answer to every sales problem? Why do we puke mass e-mails onto unsuspecting prospects? Because these things are easy and comfortable. Like Mom’s meatloaf.
What’s difficult and uncomfortable is going full DVM. Digital. Visual. Mobile.
Going DVM means:
- Going all-in on a mobile-first web strategy
- Simplifying engagements through intuitive mobile apps
- Producing a wealth of video content, optimizing YouTube for search
- Having a strategic, SEO-friendly social marketing strategy
- Becoming expert at customer-respect e-marketing journeys
- Converting more of your budget to PPC and SEO from printing and direct mail
- Virtual events rather than conventions and exhibit booths.
- Using data to inform decisions, not gut-feel.
Flyers, promotional products, donut boxes with logos…they have a role in the marketing mix…but a greatly diminished role. We’re in a different era of customer engagement and acquisition and that means breaking away from traditional, comfortable marketing methods from the past.
