Trendy Marketing Channels
I’ve been around long enough to reminisce about the birth of some marketing trends (I was doing sales and marketing work before Al Gore invented the internet). Some of these trends became the backbone of many a marketing strategy. Others burst on the scene with a lot of fanfare, and then fizzled.
These days, we’re hearing a lot about Social Media and Mobile marketing. I’m not going to take a position on the staying power of either of these marketing channels. Personally, I like them both and I’m intrigued by their possibilities. What I know is that a lot of people are talking about them, and some are even doing something with them. My intuition tells me we’re about to start climbing the steep part of the adoption curve on Mobile marketing, and we’re well into it on Social Media marketing.
My interest is in helping marketers understand what to do with these channels. Many of us, if we’re honest, wonder how to exploit the newest marketing trends, if we should even consider them and when. Social and Mobile are channels with tremendous reach. What hasn't changed are the principles we should apply to using them. They're the same principles that apply to any marketing channel.
As marketers, the emergence of a new channel doesn’t intimidate us. In fact, most marketers I know are very progressive and often the first to embrace new methods and means of doing our work. So when someone rushes up to us breathlessly and demands to know what we’re going to do about _________ (fill in the blank with the latest trendy marketing channel), we already know how to answer. With questions:
- Who are we trying to reach with our message?
- How does this new channel help us do that?
Of course marketers already know the answer to the first question. We ask it all the time to ensure we're always pursuing the ideal segment. But there is value in asking it to reinforce to the interrogator what's really important. The second question about the channel is one to which we’ll know the answer before we commit to it.
Many of the tools in the Demand Metric library help you make sure you can provide quality and timely answers to both of these questions. So when talk in the break room turns to Mobile marketing, or the management team wants to know what the Social Media strategy is, use our resources to help you lead your organization the right direction and get you there faster. Let me know where you are on your journey: jerry@demandmetric.com.
Jerry
