Last week, I introduced this blog by telling you all about my design manifesto, especially as it relates to branding. The main point of that being that I believe that everyone deserves great design. I don’t think there should be any room for ugly in business no matter how big or small it is. Now, let’s talk about marketing!
I started my career in the world of marketing almost 10 years ago in the new and exciting field of “social networks”. By new and exciting, I mean no one in my company had any clue what we should be doing with it or how, only that we should be doing something, and I was the guinea pig that was recruited. I am super thankful for that job, as it started a decade-long love affair with social media and marketing, but boy did I have no idea what I was getting into. Neither did the company. As I did my research and created a strategy, I found myself also trying to educate and defend “social networks” to an executive team that cared about one thing and one thing only – dollar dollar bills. Namely, how my work and my salary was making more of them. “Content marketing” was barely a twinkle of a buzzword at the time, so it wasn’t easy to explain that we were positioning ourselves as an authority and creating ambassadors out of our users that would drive repeat business, and the fancy reporting, tracking links, and analytics that exist today weren’t nearly as robust.
There was nothing wrong with my company executives asking that we show them the money. At the end of the day, the reason we do anything in business is to make a profit. No, the problems at the heart of this cautionary tale are far more tactical and so, so common. In the end, the entire project turned out to be a bust, but I learned some very important lessons that have shaped my philosophy of marketing to this day.
1. Bigger, newer, shinier isn’t always better.
It feels like every day there are multiple new apps, websites, tools, articles, TED talks, strategies, and more and more and more competing for your attention and telling you that THEY are the key to growing your business. It’s impossible to keep up with it all, and it can feel like you’re missing all the boats all the time. It can lead to overwhelm, despair, and a major case of the screw-its if you’re not careful. There is always room to grow and try new things, but as long as you have a solid foundation of basic strategies, those are just icing on the cake.
2. Tactics are like soap opera characters. They’re never really dead.
“Print is dead.” “Blogging is dead.” “Email is dead.” “SEO is dead.” I have heard all of these and more in the last few years; enough to fill a small graveyard. But like a soap opera character, Rory Williams from Doctor Who, or Sharknado movies, I don’t believe any major marketing tactic is ever really DEAD. The other day, kid you not, I saw one of those little cardboard signs stuck in the ground next to the freeway advertising graphic design services. At first I laughed and shook my head, but you know what? He’s out there trying something, and for a digital service like graphic design, it’s a pretty out of the box strategy. And if he is trying to attract a certain clientele, people who drive around all day, contractors, landscapers, repair services, real estate agents, salespeople…it’s not a bad idea. By the time I thought it through, I was tempted to try it myself. I didn’t, because…
3. Know thy audience, know thyself, know thy plan.
Circling back to the woeful tale of my first social media job, the problem (if you haven’t figured it out yet) with my company’s foray into social media was that they didn’t think about how we would be reaching our audience with social, how we would be communicating ourselves and our services when we did, and what the plan would be. There was no budget, no goal, no intention. The only catalyst for this decision that I could discern was that we needed to be doing it because everyone else was doing it, and it was “the next big thing”. This is a terrible reason to do anything; in life or in business. So ask yourself, “Where is my audience hanging out?”, “What do I like to do?” and “What are my goals? What am I willing to spend in time and moolah?” I didn’t go out and make a bunch of signs for the side of the road like the one I saw the other day because those businesses aren’t my target audience.
“But,” you ask, “what if I don’t KNOW what I don’t know? What if I don’t know how to define any of that stuff and I am just hopelessly lost and confused?”
I am so glad you asked!
There are professionals you can hire to help you figure that stuff out. I’m one of them. Hop on over to my Packages page for more info.
Stay tuned later this week for an expanded post on my feelings about social media. And boy, do I have feelings about social media. Get ready to hear a lot about that much used (some would say overused) buzzword: authenticity.