Is the traditional way of marketing dead?

Seven Flawless Marketing Essentials - Part Three:

People have changed the way that they absorb information from online marketing efforts, research products and services, make purchasing decisions, and share their views and experiences. The customer has more power than ever, and tunes out traditional sales and marketing messages more and more frequently. But for some reason, businesses still rely on the same sales and marketing tactics that they have used for more than a decade. 
Although there will always be a place for the writers, the photographers and the designers, these people should only make up a portion of the marketing team, not the entire department. There is a more efficient approach to marketing.

Changing the Way We Think of Marketing

In order to bring your marketing department up to speed with the times, it is important to stop using the word marketing to describe every individual aspect of the process. For example, if we’re talking about promotion, why not say promotion? If it’s advertising that needs to happen, label it as advertising, not simply marketing. This might not seem important, but the psychological effect of calling things the right names has been known for many years. 

To look at it another way: attorneys, accountants and IT professionals all cost your organization money. This isn’t to say that the money isn’t well spent, or that these professionals don’t sometimes save corporations a lot of pain; it’s just that they do not produce revenue, and marketing does. This then begs the question of why the law firms command such a greater retainer than marketing firms. The answer is that marketing has become the place that produces expensive brochures and ads, and hurts the company budget.

Transforming Your Marketing Centre

The following seven-steps will outline how to change your marketing centre from a place in your organization that is thought of as a money drain, to the primary centre for growth and revenue that it truly is.  

  1. Strategy – Having the right plan in place 

  1. Team – The right people doing the right things 

  1. Process – An agreed way of taking leads from awareness to action 

  1. Systems – Deciding on the right systems 

  1. Content – Employing useful, creative and thoughtful content 

  1. Promotion – Creating a well-planned promotional agenda  

  1. Measurement and Reporting – Tracking how you’re doing 

These steps are further elaborated on in the blog series: Seven Flawless Marketing Essentials