Bill Lee of Harvard Business Review posted an article recently that speaks to what is happening in marketing. The world has gone digital. Traditional marketing and traditional branding has been replaced with online marketing, digital branding with website logos, building optimized web pages and marketing website online with Search Engine Optimization – SEO and Pay Per Click – PPC advertising.
Will traditional advertising ever be back to the power player it once was? We’re not sure… but what we know for now is that Google is seeming to reign as king in the world of website marketing. If you aren’t marketing your website with SEO or PPC you are probably behind. If you’d like to check out the article I have posted excerpts below.
Traditional marketing — including advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications — is dead. Many people in traditional marketing roles and organizations may not realize they’re operating within a dead paradigm. But they are. The evidence is clear.
Buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, and often from sources outside the firm such as word-of-mouth or customer reviews. in today’s increasingly social media-infused environment, traditional marketing and sales not only doesn’t work so well, it doesn’t make sense. When you try to extend traditional marketing logic into the world of social media, it simply doesn’t work. Just ask Facebook, which finds itself mired in an ongoing debate about whether marketing on Facebook is effective.
Restore community marketing. Companies should position their social media efforts to replicate as much as possible this community-oriented buying experience. In turn, social media firms, such as Facebook, should become expert at enabling this. They can do this by expanding the buyer’s network of peers who can provide trustworthy information and advice based on their own experience with the product or service.
Find your customer influencers. Many firms spend lots of resources pursuing outside influencers who’ve gained following on the Web and through social media. A better approach is to find and cultivate customer influencers and give them something great to talk about.
So take this article for what it is and think about how your traditional marketing efforts should change… Or if you have already changed your marketing tactics, congratulate yourself. Marketing in the digital age is different, can seem scary, but with a little bit of the right help your business will be successful for a fraction of the cost of the past. Branding a company and marketing a company with traditional media always had a fixed cost, and it was high. The Light at the end of the tunnel is that online or digital marketing using social media and SEO could be free if you do the work your self or you can pick your budget if you choose to do something like AdWords (PPC). So don’t be afraid, do a little research, contact an online marketing professional and get a little advice.
And as usual from the Free SEO Tools Blog… Happy Marketing!
