Marketing Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
The definition of marketing according to Merriam Webster: 1a) the act or process of selling in a market 1b) the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.
What comes to mind when you see the words promoting & selling? When I hear the word promoting I see a megaphone and a guy “barking” information about the features and benefits.
Traditional marketing is kind of like that. We’ve always just tried to interrupt the prospect by “shouting” with the hope that we could get their attention and they would listen to our message. The idea is to holler louder and more often that your competition. Some examples of how we shout are Newspaper, Radio, TV, Direct mail, e-mail, cold calling. All of these things still work, but not always on their own. In 2014, you need to work the other side of the marketing equation.
The other side of the marketing formula is Inbound marketing. Some people also refer to this as “Pull” marketing as you pull the prospects into your CRM by sharing content that is relevant to your target audience. Some examples of Inbound would be Blogs, White papers, Video, Podcasts, e-books and Infographics. The idea is to “pull” the right kind of prospects into your CRM and begin to “nurture” them with content that is interesting to them and may help them with business issues that they face. Another term for nurturing the prospects is “Drip” marketing. The terms are interchangeable.
So why don’t we just pick up the phone and start calling? Because most prospects are not ready to engage yet. In fact, according to Gleanster, 50% of qualified leads are not ready to buy yet. Those prospects in that group need to be nurtured until they are ready to buy. If you are the company that keeps in touch with a drip marketing strategy then you will stay top of mind with the prospect. But if you’re like me, remembering and actually executing a series of touches would most likely not happen, resulting in good solid leads falling though the cracks. The answer is marketing automation. Software that can set up a Drip program to be sent out automatically and measure the results in real time.
Marketing automation is rapidly evolving and will be a huge part of marketing going forward. Contact us to see how marketing automation can help your business grow right now.