Bygone Days of Old School Marketing

Old school marketing tactics don’t work as well as they used to and most marketing professionals know it, but aren't sure what other tactics to try. Companies across the globe are seeing severe decreases in their return on marketing investments. Across industries, and reported by marketing analysts, companies are seeing diminishing effectiveness of traditional marketing communications, advertising, public relations and events.

Consumers are actively seeking out ways to avoid the dreaded marketing messages. Companies around the world are spending millions on spam filtering products. More and more people are avoiding TV and radio commercials by using TiVo or other DVR solutions and filling up their MP3 players so they can stay away from the radio. The National Do Not Call list takes care of telemarketers bothering you during dinner and there are a number of services that will help you get off of junk (errr, I mean direct) mail lists.

The downfall of most traditional marketing activities is that they talk at people rather than with people. People are sick of being marketed at. They want to be talked to and they want to talk back. They want to have a conversation, not a sales pitch. They want participation in their conversations, not more pop-ups at their favorite websites, spam or snail-mail junk in their mailbox. And they want to know that companies care about their needs and wants and are listening to what they're saying.

Conversation Marketing

Conversation Marketing is the strategic convergence of many traditional marketing activities optimized for participating in the market conversation. I developed the conversation marketing methodology after implementing these programs as an in-house marketing professional and years of listening and participating in the marketing industry's market conversation. Conversation Marketing puts the focus on participating in the market conversation and engaging with the ecosystem of Influencers and Participants.

The time is right for companies to look at how they can be participating members of the marketing conversation rather than dumping more and more noise about themselves into new conversation platforms. In developing my approach, I considered what participating in a conversation really means and formulated 5 objectives all companies should strive for.

• Listening to current customers, prospects, industry experts and other influencers in the market space and internalizing what you hear to improve your business.
• Speaking to the overall market conversation with quality, supportive and helpful content that people want to respond to, inquire about and pass on to others.
• Caring about what is being said about your products, your company, your competitors and your industry, but more importantly, caring about helping your customers and prospects fulfill their wants and needs.
• Sharing your experiences—positive and negative—and your insights as you grow your company and evolve your product lines.
• Building relationships with market conversation Influencers, Participants and Listeners based on the mutual interest of the consumer problems that need to be solved with product innovation.

The optimal mix of marketing activities that focus on achieving these 5 objectives is unique to every company and is highly dependent on company goals, resources, products/services, brand personality and many other factors.