I may not be Nostradamus, Jeane Dixon, or even Miss Cleo (and thank goodness, considering they’ve all ceased to be), but I’m fairly confident when I predict that your marketing efforts are seriously behind both the times and the eight ball, and that your company is but one Twitter fail away from extinction.
How do I know this? Simple: You have no chatbot. Seriously, my good marketing manager, what are you thinking? You need a chatbot. And, come to think of it, an Alexa strategy. And a Google Home strategy. Also, influencers. Gotta have ’em. Never mind that your firm’s main line of business is industrial fasteners. At least you have a chief advocacy officer. What? No? Why do I even bother?
If the above feels a touch extreme, chances are you’re reading this on a Monday morning and have yet to slip back into the cacophonous deluge of marketing tips, tricks, and death notices (TV’s been dead for 16 years, don’t’chaknow) that fill your feeds to the brim. If you pay attention to even a fraction of it, you’re likely second-guessing every marketing decision you make.
And how could you not? This is a fast-paced world full of exponential change that you can’t possibly understand if you’re not taking the deep dive into big data. Right?
Of course not.
The marketing fear of missing out (FOMO) is real. It also understandable, and beatable. All the things I mentioned above are tools that numerous brands have used successfully (according their own reporting, which may be suspect). But the key word in that sentence is “tools.” Nearly everything you see being touted as the latest, greatest, holy grailiest of advertising excellence is merely another tactic.
And that’s where your years of experience should kick in, helping you to determine which of the new (and existing) tools fit your brand’s needs best. Should you learn about them? Certainly, even though it sometimes seems impossible to keep up. Should you try some out? Absolutely; setting aside a bit of your budget—marketing or otherwise—for experimentation is always a good idea. But do you have to scrap everything and rush pell-mell into the next big thing in order to stay alive? No, a thousand retweets no.
The tidal wave of new-and-questionably-improved ad tools will probably never ebb. But remember this: Anyone insisting that you embrace their prescribed tool is selling a book about it, runs an agency that specializes in it, doesn’t know how to use other marketing tactics well, or all of the above.
So stay interesting. Create boldly. Speak strategically. Act honestly. Sure, you may miss out on synergizing the newest adtech, but you won’t miss out on the most important thing—having a brand people actually like.
This column was printed in the June/July 2018 edition of B2B.
