How much has marketing really changed in the last 30 years?
Have the principles of marketing changed in the age of the Internet? Or have many of the key fundamentals of the discipline stayed the same?
Having just wrapped up my exit from the agency I founded 12 years ago and moved into the consulting world, I’ve had some time for reflection recently.
Some things have changed dramatically over the last 30 years, yet in others, nothing’s really changed at all.
Firstly, for younger readers (let’s face it, that’s virtually everyone), let’s just set the scene...
Yes, we did have colour televisions back then. And no, trains weren’t all steam powered.
But here’s a shocker for you—we used to design on a computer with an 800MB (that’s MB, not GB) hard drive and 16MB of RAM.
Then we’d save our work onto a 1.44MB floppy disk and send it via courier to a reprographic studio where they would produce a set of negatives.
They would be returned to us so we could clip the four colour separations to a lightbox and check the correct alignment.
Then, another courier would deliver them to the printer (or newspaper or magazine in the case of an advert).
There was no such thing as digital marketing – no SEO, PPC, social media, etc. – so you could be forgiven for thinking that everything is now totally and utterly different.
And in some ways, of course, you’d be right. The Internet, social media, and a million different marketing technology solutions have revolutionised our lives.
Our ability to track what we do, and use data to measure results and optimise performance, is probably the most significant shift from when I started.
But in other ways – i.e. the fundamental principles of marketing – things really never change.
And, as marketers in a digital age, we sometimes need reminding of the basics.
We’re quick to jump on new and shiny things, but occasionally, we’re just as quick to forget the fundamentals.
Ignoring my pet subject of ‘content marketing’ and when it was invented – I’m pretty sure people have been doing it for a long time before digital came along – here are a few quick examples to get you thinking…
1) Right message, right audience, right channel, right time
It’s not rocket science… break down your audience into segments or personas and understand what makes them tick.
Identify the right messages for each target group and present them to that audience via a channel they actually use at the right time.
Back in the days before digital, how did we put together a marketing strategy?
Well, here’s what we didn’t do… start with a list of popular magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV stations, throw in some outdoor advertising close to busy roads, and scatter the budget evenly between them (please tell me that’s not how you did it!).
But that’s exactly what some companies do with the digital channels available today.
Just because we have more ‘cool stuff’ available doesn’t mean we have to use it all!
I visited a potential new client a while back, and the MD asked me, “You’ve looked at our social media – can you tell us why our Facebook page isn’t performing well?” I replied, “Only if you can tell me why you have a Facebook page in the first place!”
2) Blinded by technology
The advancement of technology is relentless. But, again, just because they’ve built it doesn’t mean you have to find a way to use it!
Over the years, I’ve witnessed a repeating theme of companies embracing new technology because they saw something cool, got overexcited, and didn’t properly evaluate their actual requirements and what benefit they would derive from the tech.
In other words, they didn’t have a requirement and then go out and find the technology that would help them achieve their goals.
Instead, they reverse-engineered ways to use the technology they’d been blinded by.
In many instances, this resulted in them wasting time and money delivering ‘nice to have’ functions at the expense of ‘must have’ functions.
Back in the day, I had clients wanting a website at a time when none of their target audience would have had access to the Internet.
But they didn’t have the budget to advertise in a newspaper supplement that would be read by several hundred thousand of their exact targets.
I’ve met several companies recently that have signed up for all-singing, all-dancing, inbound marketing software solutions or social media planning/scheduling tools at a substantial cost to their business.
But then they realised that the platform relies on content to feed the entire process—something they’d completely overlooked.
3) Authentic communications
One of my first clients owned a massive multi-story department store in a rundown part of town. The store sold everything under the sun, from furniture to clothes and any other random job lot he’d picked up.
It's not the most glamorous start for an ambitious young agency, but bills had to be paid!
Yet he was determined that his advertising presented a different image.
His ads set an expectation of something closer to Harrods than Poundland.
His definition of marketing was a technique he could use to encourage people to visit his store who would never normally shop there.
Because of this he was attracting customers, but totally the wrong type.
Footfall wasn’t converting into sales – possibly because they were too busy trying to keep one eye on their cars to make sure they were still parked outside and had all four wheels intact.
Today is no different.
Marketers have never been under so much pressure to deliver numbers: traffic to the website, more likes or followers on social media, and so on.
There are so many tricks and techniques for getting those numbers, but traffic, for traffic’s sake, can actually do more harm than good.
At a time when authenticity (especially in the context of social and influencer marketing) is on everyone’s lips, it’s never been more critical to understand your brand and what it is.
Too many businesses try to position themselves somewhat differently from reality and then fail to match their communications to their audience.
You’ve worked so hard to get them to interact in some way with you – don’t let them down.
4) The power of recommendations and influencer marketing
Recommendations and reviews weren’t invented for the Internet.
Testimonials have always been powerful in marketing. Before the Internet, what did you do if you needed a plumber or the roof fixing?
You may have used a directory like the Yellow Pages, but you’d probably also asked around. Has a neighbour, friend, or family member used someone they can recommend?
Building testimonials and proactively driving recommendations and referrals has always been one of the first things I’ve tried to introduce into my clients’ marketing material.
Back in 1994, we engaged a well-known cricketer as a brand ambassador for a client.
He turned up at events, and we produced a range of marketing material that featured him and the client’s product in ways that felt less like an advert and more educational.
We leveraged his large fan base and trusted position to introduce our client’s product to a broader audience and make it instantly credible by association. Sound familiar?
5) Tell your story
Another buzzword hijacked by digital/content marketing in recent years is ‘storytelling.’ I read an article last week in a reputable marketing publication that started with this sentence: ‘Brand storytelling is gaining momentum in the marketing world, and with good reason.’
The same article then went on to define brand storytelling as: “Using a narrative to connect your brand to customers, with a focus on linking what you stand for to the values you share with your customers.”
Um… correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that marketing principle didn't just start to gain momentum in 2018!
In conclusion
So, a quarter of a century on, has marketing itself actually changed, or do we just have new and evolving tools available to us?
And do they always help us to do our jobs better, or are they sometimes a distraction that stop us doing the simple things well?
Answers on a postcard, please... sorry - a postcard was a thing we used to send...