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Welcome to the Evolution

In this installment of the series we will find out what a Dinosaur Marketer does, and how to spot them in order to avoid them. I’ll also begin to explain to you what will work today and in the future, as well as what companies need to consider if they wish to be a part of this future. Today we will look largely at the Internet perspective since this is where this revolution began.

Recognizing a Dinosaur Marketer

Anytime a Marketer is telling you that your current message should be used on Social Networking sites etc. You should run the other way. The simple fact is that old-school, Hard-sell, in your face, marketing is not going to impress anyone on a social networking site, and it will brand you and your company as a Spammer very quickly.

In the future, the successful marketing message will be an information road sign. With a strong invitational tone and a weak or non-existent sales message, the key will be to provide them with key information up front, but not to try and force anything down their throats.

The Comfortable Lie

The change away from so much of what we have known about marketing is causing some serious problems for many. Both business owners and a lot of marketers are uncomfortable to accept that what they know, and what has been working for so long is not only losing effectiveness, but could actually be hurting a company.

Many marketers out there are capitalizing on this reluctance, and they are making big money telling businesses exactly what they want to hear. These are the dinosaur marketers that can effectively put your company on the extinction list. They are not selling you the best option, what they are telling you is. "We can take the old ways, and force them into the new media." This is a great sales pitch, because it sells comfortable, easy to understand, old school marketing in new wrapping to those that don’t understand what has really happened to the marketplace. It is also a great way to make you about as popular as a meter-maid. You are about to become a Spammer.

Here are two key trademarks of the Dinosaur Marketer

1. They will propagate using Social Media Profiles to spread your sales message. The worst possible scenario of this are the ones that actually hijack "hack and steal" profiles on places like MySpace in order to use the credibility of the person to send marketing messages to their friends. Should they do this in order to promote your company, you are now liable for the legal ramifications of this.

Most aren’t that bad I have to admit. The norm is to set up a profile and try to add as many people as possible in order to then send them your sales pitch. The more unscrupulous will hire people to do this in large numbers with more or less sophistication, (less is the standard.) Then they show you how much traffic they are generating.

You can forget about the traffic here, it has little or no bearing, because this like any other mass marketing will have a very low conversion rate. What is even more telling is that profiles that do this are marked as spam and deleted. Although the people on this list might be interested in your product, they are not interested in being disturbed and spammed, so they will not look at your information as often as they will mark you as a spammer effectively cutting your access to them.

2. They will try to sell you on email lists, and often claim that these are "targeted".

They do this by data-mining social networking sites, finding people who are interested in your area of business, and then compiling lists for it. They will then tell you to send emails to these addresses.
These approaches are bad ideas because they lack the key ingredient necessary for success in the modern marketplace. Remember that the customer now expects you to ask for their permission before you start bombarding them with sales pitches. An interest in your general area is not the same as giving you permission.
Instead these marketing dinosaurs are trying to use some middle ground of acceptability to justify this approach. Arguing that just because someone lists "gardening" as a hobby, they want every piece of gardening related advertising you can throw at them.

You can’t have my email

People are now protecting their contact information more and more. Even when we do post an email address online today, it is becoming normal to camouflage it in several ways. Instead of Myemail@myisp.com, People will write things like myemail (a) myisp (dot) com in attempts to confuse the automatic software applications (called robots or spiders) that scour the web for the less careful posters. This is only one of the many attempts to protect email addresses from spam.

A lot of people now have a "trash" email with a service like Gmail or Yahoo mail to use as the email openly displayed. This is the equivalent of a large garbage can to collect your information. That most of the trash will collect there. Again, this is a hint to be applied towards your re-evaluation of your direct email marketing. If people don’t want it, why keep doing it.

The Dinosaur Marketer will apply the reasoning "If they don’t protect themselves, its fair game." I’ve heard that said more than once by the old school marketers. Now all I’m asking is that you think about this for a while. Not protecting oneself is not the same as giving everyone the permission to disturb. This kind of reasoning is like saying "if you don’t lock your car, it’s you are giving permission for anyone to use it." If you don’t appreciate spam, what makes you think that your customers will?

What is the market demanding today?

The market demands less noise. It’s really that simple. We are still extremely interested in huge information flows. Interconnecting ourselves to more and more information every day, but the customer makes the choice of what information they want.

This means that there are still plenty of customers out there interested in what you have to say, but they want it when they want it. They are demanding information at their leisure, and either with their express permission or at their direct demand.

Google is a great example of this. We hear all the time that being on the first page of Google for your specific search terms is key to generating business. This is not a testament to Google as much as it is a clear indicator what the new marketing landscape demands. It does however explain that Google has understood this and has become a premier provider of the solution that the customers want.

What I want, When I want it

Context is the key word you need to remember. When a search is made for "business cards" on Google, chances are the searcher is interested in buying business cards. Not getting an oil change or reading about Britney Spears latest adventures. This is the difference between the modern world and the old mass marketing swamp.

Your customers and potential customers are getting very good at finding what they want. And thanks to all the social sites, they are getting even better at sharing this with their friends. Your business has in other words only a few simple requirements. Make sure that the customer is able to find you when they want to, and when they do, meet their expectations.

Forced Ethics

Unscrupulous marketers have made customers weary of being cheated, tricked and duped. In the past, people might have just walked out of the store. Today, they will write about their experience. Your company will quickly show up on Google’s first page alright, with the additional keyword "scam" attached to it.

Try it now, pick any decent size company, and search for it on a search engine. But add the word Scam ("acme widget design" + scam). The results are pretty telling about this concept. When you manage to make a single customer feel like they have been cheated, you are going to have to live with it. And your company name will be dragging through that swamp for much longer than you might want it to

This creates what I call Forced Ethics; the mere possibility of this happening is changing the marketplace and mostly for the better. Customers now have the direct power to do serious damage to your business based on their experience alone. Negative publicity spreads much faster than positive leaving a large possibility of making a small mistake a very expensive one.

Your only real defense is to do business in an ethical manner. Companies are being forced to live up to all those lofty statements that they made in the past and never cared about. You have to promise what you can keep, and keep what you promise, or your customers will spread the word very quickly. You are no longer collecting the cash and moving on, every single time this happens you are losing prospective customers at an alarming rate.

The Dinosaurs of the business world are trying to fight this with lawsuits, suing bloggers and social network posters that mention negative aspects of their companies. But the only effect is a snowball of bad publicity. You have to remember, that even if the initial statement is false and you can win a libel law-suit over it. The lawsuit itself will now make you look like Goliath, and the original false statement is going to be reported on 100’s of blogs around the internet.

Now the blogs are reporting what is true, you did sue XX over the statement, so you just managed to create a negative publicity campaign for yourself that you can’t sue your way out of.

This effect is the same regardless of whether a customer is disappointed on or off-line, the information about this experience will make its way online and on to hundreds, thousands or potentially even millions of others.

It’s not about Web 2.0, It’s about relationships

Your business has to be based on relationships, your relationship with your customer will make you part of their network of connections. It’s a circle of friends and acquaintances that you have to treat like a social group of any other kind. Trying to force your way in will result in an increased effort to keep you out.
If you can build strong relationships, you will be invited into these circles. That’s where your money will be coming from in the future.

In Part three, we are going to take a hard look at everything you should be doing, how to make social networks both on and off-line work for you, and how to build your business around long term sustainable practices.
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