Is Traditional Marketing Dead?

That's what an article I read in the Harvard Business Review states. While I agree that marketing is certainly changing, and my DVR allows me to fast forward through many commercials, unless I need five minutes to take the dog out or something, I don't think it's quite dead yet. I've been flipping past advertisements in magazines for years, and yet, those magazines still sell advertising.

And the funniest part of the whole blog post was where the author pointed out that "National Instruments used an especially creative approach with its customer influencers, who were mid-level IT managers at the companies they did business with. NI engaged with them by providing powerful research and financial proof points they could take to senior management, showing that NI solutions were creating strategic benefits. That got NI into the C-suite. It also increased the reputation of the mid-level advocates, who were seen as strategic thinkers bringing new ideas to senior management." I'd really like to know who the author thought generated the powerful research and financial proof points. It certainly wasn't the sales team, not that they couldn't do it. It was the marketing team, and that's what they do.

So, no, marketing isn't dead. Any piece of paper you are handed at a tradeshow, any dvd, handout, slide presentation, and any number of things mailed to your home, are created by a marketing department somewhere, even if the marketing department is just one person. Website design? Marketing. The copy on your website? Hopefully marketing, and someone who can spell without using spell check. That white paper the C-level suite wanted so they could showcase themselves as experts in their field? Definitely marketing.

I do agree with one point the author made, and that is the fact that marketing ROI has many different calculations related to determining how successful a campaign is or was, and these calculations don't necessarily translate well to any accounting balance sheet or any other generally accepted financial metric used to calculate monetary value. The old marketing rule of thumb is that if you have a system in place to track where your customers are coming from, you can tell which campaigns work, and which ones don't. If there isn't a system in place, then yes, marketing is likely just a crapshoot.

It's getting easier and easier to track incoming customers, however, and how they came to you. Google Analytics will tell you were your blog and website readers are coming from, for instance, and they'll even tell you the keywords used to find you. And that's just one tool. I've used Salesforce.com in the past, and it's pretty easy to tell how the customer got to you, and then relay that to the sales rep so they know, too. It's teamwork, and when it works between the marketing department and the sales department, company sales are probably showing organic and inorganic growth.

Marketing isn't dead yet, and funnily enough, neither is print, despite the last ten years of everyone saying it is.

When Your Advice Falls Victim to That of Well-Intentioned Friends

I have several clients, some of whom take my advice without question and some who run it by all their friends before making a decision. There are issues with both. I'm not perfect, so taking my advice solely because I'm in marketing takes my client's intelligence and vision for their business out of their hands. Great that they trust me that much, though. Not likely to argue with that anytime soon!

The second client is much more problematic. In a world where the lines between marketing, social media, and public relations are smudged and blurry to most clients, there's a good chance they hired you thinking your expertise extends further than it does. After all, their friends give them solid advice about all manner of things, so any professional must know more than they do.

Unfortunately, in the current marketing climate, particularly if you're adding a social media campaign, timing is of the essence. Thinking that the opportunity to showcase your skills using a specifically targeted campaign will always be there, or can 'wait a week or so' while the client thinks about it, is foolhardy. Nothing kills a business faster than a little indecision.

I'm sure I am not the only one with clients who get input from friends. During these conversations with clients, I always think of my parents, who encouraged, begged, and even pleaded with me to think for myself and take responsibility for my decisions. Fast forward to today. I have a conversation with my client. I lay out all the pros and cons, what the plan is, dates, what I need from said client to make it work, and if the pieces are contingent upon one another, how crucial the timing is. Client says 'Great! Do it!' and I leave the meeting to execute the plan. Going well, right? Please hold.

Two hours later, if I'm lucky, I get a call from client. Questions about how this works, what if we do this, why are we doing this. Fair enough. All goes well, until client says 'I talked to my friends and they say this does/doesn't work'. Then the conversation becomes very predictable.

Me: Oh, okay. So you'd like to do this instead?

Client: Yes. My friends tell me they've seen this done a lot and it works.

Me: Great. Do you know what kind of business it worked for? Is it a business that operates the same way yours does?

Client: I don't know, you're the professional. But my friends are sure this will work. It's the latest/hottest/coolest thing.

Me: Okay. In your business this isn't generally used because it doesn't tend to work, but we can give it a shot if you'd like. Let me re-work the plan and incorporate your changes.

Client: Well, I'd like to try it, so let's do that instead of the other stuff. My friends say that doesn't work.

Me (by now, biting tongue and wondering who the ubiquitous friends are and what they might do for a living): So, you want to scrap the plan you agreed to earlier and do this instead? We can incorporate this idea into the current plan and get the best of both worlds. Do you want me to pull together some numbers so we have an idea about the ROI for this new plan?

Client: No, let's just try what my friends suggested. It can't hurt, right? We can do your plan later if this doesn't work.

Me: Well, it was built around this event/season/need, so it may be too late. We can do both.

Client: Well, you think your plan is better?

Me: I did research the plan we discussed this morning and, as I said earlier, what your friends are suggesting has not worked in your industry, so it's your call, but my advice is to stick with the original plan.

Client: Okay, well, let's just try their plan. They've seen it work.

I'm sure you know how this goes. At the end of the campaign, client is frustrated and wondering why the marketing isn't working the way they want it to. I am equally frustrated, and wondering when a good time to fire my client (and their friends) is. Client wants to know why they didn't get the leads or generate clients for their business. I wonder to myself when my advice, the advice they pay for because I do this for a living, became less important than their friends, and if they blamed their friends for the failure, too. Don't worry, I'm not deluding myself, I know they aren't blaming their friends.

What's the lesson learned here? Those friends that my parents used to worry about influencing my decision making, are still here, and they are talking to everyone's clients and influencing their decision making. And while you may be getting paid for executing a bad plan after coming up with a brilliant one, it doesn't make it feel any better. We all want to be successful, right?