Did you hear that mini-explosion last week? That was my mind blowing (notice I said “MINI-explosion”).
I read an article written by Kipp Bodnar and published on HubSpot called “Marketers: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”
The gist is that technology is moving faster than ever before. When we marketers go out hunting, we are chasing some insanely fast prey as they hop from new platform to newer platform.
Our audience finds a pristine platform, marketers all flock to it like dung beetles to a freshly laid pile, with their half-baked messages and limited strategy. We ruin the platform experience with too much crap and the audience moves onto something else … then we give chase again.
As marketing consultants, we hear it all the time.
“Should we be on Instagram?”
“What can we do on SnapChat?”
“How do we use video?”
“Should we do Content Marketing?”
“What ever happened to Pokémon Go?”
If you really think about it, these questions aren’t too much different than:
“Should we be on the radio?”
“Should we use direct mail?”
“What about that email thing?”
“What the hell IS Pokémon Go?”
We need to remember that these are all simply TOOLS. As marketers, our tool box is getting crazy-immense. And, the shiniest, most electronic tool in the box isn’t always the best.
Anytime ANYONE asks, “Should we be doing…” Stop and ask:
- What do we want to accomplish?
- What do we need to sell to accomplish it?
- Who are the very best people to sell it to?
- What do we want them to do?
- Have we made it easy to do it?
- Why would they do it with us, instead of anyone else?
- What do these people pay attention to?
- What tools will best reach them while they are paying attention?
- What do we need to say or do to get them to pay attention on that tool?
- What will it cost?
- What results do we need to justify the expense?
When you jump straight to question #8 and jump in with little to know strategy, you clutter the platform and cheapen it for those of us that approach it with caution, planning and tact.
There are a million things you CAN be doing, but you only have the budget and time to do a few things that you SHOULD be doing.
Focus … not on the new shiny tools, but on the job. Then build a strategy to the OBJECTIVE, not the platform.
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