Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was going for my MBA, I teamed up with a DBA candidate to put together our Masters/Doctoral thesis on advertising clutter. Given that people were exposed to something like 13K promotions per day, how could a company break through to be noticed, favorably received, and remembered? Many months and gallons of coffee later we had the answer ... the silver bullet ... the promotional holy grail for companies large and small.
The answer? Promote better than your competitors. *yawn*. No, really. The was no unique formula, no special marketing mix, no secret channel, no new technology that separated the wild successes from the spectacular -- or apparently not so spectacular -- failures.
The companies and products that broke through the noise were those that produced superior quality communications: messages that connected and resonated, were clever or fun or beautiful or provocative.
Today, however, we're empowered with the brave, "new" world of content marketing which the internet and social media have enabled and fueled: A new, egalitarian world where potential buyers can pull extensive information on their chosen topic of interest, independent -- or at least less dependent -- on $300 million advertising campaigns.
Don't believe me? Search on hypernasal speech. What?? Yes, hypernasal speech returns more than 22,000 results in Google. Data mining whitepaper returns over 5 million. Data mining software returns over 73 million. Email and social channels are equally noisy, with open rates declining and skeptism rising.
So ... where does that leave those of us with limited marketing budgets, but lots of good information and channel options?
Promote better than your competitors. Produce superior quality communications: messages that connect and resonate, are clever or fun or beautiful or provocative. *yawn*
