The Great Marketing Divide. Understanding It And Bridging It

I’ve been thinking a lot about digital & social media these days.
And I have to tell you I have mixed emotions about it. On the one hand, as a blogger, it’s been pretty good to me. I have solid followings on beBee, Facebook and even over in the Lumpy Kingdom (LI),
But that statement is based solely on what I was looking to get out of the entire experience. And new business or new clients is not one of those things.
Over the years, I have gotten clients from my blogging for sure. But as a marketing medium, relative to all the other things I do to generate business, it’s really rather low on the totem pole.
Some people swear by it. They do all the stuff that all the 10 Ways To Become Rich & Famous In Digital Media bloggers tell them to do. And they keep pounding and pounding and pounding.
What they don’t realize is that the more time they spend pounding the more it reduces the ROI that ensues when they finally hit.

And this is what I call The Great Divide.
The world of digital marketing, with few exceptions, operates on about a 1% ROI. And that ROI is so small simply because your time actually has a value and if you are not careful, then you run the risk of slowly and surely going bust from the incredible amount of time it takes to generate business from most digital marketing activities.

How To Bridge The Great Divide

It’s really simple. And it’s honestly Marketing 101 stuff. It’s summed up in 9 words. DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET.
It’s one thing to build a personal brand or even, in some cases a brand for your company online. But the fact is that in order for you to actually reach the people you need to reach, you simply cannot count on them all being there, reading your messages or posts, seeing your ads or even opening your emails at any given time.
This kind of marketing is what is known in my world as ‘shotgun’, which is to say you reach out the the entire universe at a certain time and you hit a certain percentage of people. But…
A) The vast majority of these people will not be in your target audience
B) These people may not get attracted to your message and actually read it.
C) These people may read your message and get interested but then scroll on and forget about you because they do not have an immediate need for your product or service.
This is an extremely wasteful and inefficient way to market your personal brand or your business. And because its also the way the majority of businesses operate on line, it’s an extremely crowded shotgun range.

The Other Side Of The Great Divide

I’ve been in advertising and communications all my adult life. And I have always been a big believer is something my old friend Goff Moore referred to as “Horses for Courses”
This was a direct reference to the need for strategic development to help shape and direct advertising messages, back in the day.
And don’t kid yourself…that need has never been more important than it is today, as the digital marketing community comes at you will both guns blazing, promises of business up the wazoo and a personal or business brand that will be the envy of all your peers.
This is mostly bullshit created to get you into some kind of digital marketing program that will entail more work and take more time to get you where you need to go than you would have ever imagined.|

How Things Really Work

For purposes of reference, let’s say there’s digital and analog marketing techniques.
A lot of businesses started by younger people these days tend to ignore the analog techniques, (consumer advertising, direct marketing, PR and promotion), simply because they have no experience with these media and they also have a built-in bias against them, because they are ‘digital’ creatures.
As a result, they have a decided preference for digital marketing and accept the fact that the leaning curve is steep, the targeting is fragmented and or inefficient, the time frame is long and the ROI is low.
In short, a lot of these businesses are simply repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot.
On the other hand, businesses who start without a bias one way or another, devise a strategy based on accurate targeting and choose the right media to reach their audience efficiently, from all the media available to them are obviously going to achieve a higher ROI and have a definite competitive advantage.
As I said…very simple.
Why this simplicity of reasoning manages to elude so many people is one of marketing’s most incredible mysteries.

Things To Keep In Mind

• Understand that the success stories you most often hear about digital media are from companies who have also done a lot of analog marketing to support their digital efforts. The digital marketers don’t tell you that. But it’s true.
• A 45 calibre analog pistol is much more effective and has a longer range than any digital shotgun.
• Putting all your eggs in one basket can be hazardous to the health of your business.
• Never forget that effective marketing is based on effective reach and that every business will need a combination of tools, based on who they want to reach and what they want to tell their prospect when they do reach them.
To tell you the truth, this is the way it’s always been in marketing. And it is the way it’s always been, because it’s what works.

Don’t Abandon Digital...But Understand Where It’s At

The thing about digital (and social) media is that it is still relatively new compared to a lot of the analog media. Print is a couple centuries old. Radio is a century. TV is close to 70 years old. Direct marketing, a couple centuries.
These media have had time to mature and build effectiveness with generations of people. That’s why they work.
Digital media is still in its infancy. And it’s currently structured in such a way that the amount of work require to make it pay is pretty hefty.

That is not to say that it doesn’t have potential. But just remember this. The digital marketing you do is very much part of the first wave in this whole area. You are the guinea pigs and crash test dummies.
Hopefully the industry learns and refines in the same way that analog media had to learn and refine to get where it is today.
I’m optimistic. But I’m also realistic and I hope this has helped give you some perspective, even though it’s just my own opinion.

If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced  communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.
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