Part 3

During the month of November, I am celebrating 25 years in business by reflecting on an aspect of my business for which I am grateful. Today I want to reflect on the lessons I have learned by starting and running a small marketing business and the way marketing, in particular, has changed in those years.

Let me start by saying, my oh my, how business has changed! When I first started my marketing business, it was the mid-90s. Websites were a novel idea and most businesses did not have one. In fact, if a business was using email, it was just for inner-office communications. It was seen as a way to communicate without taking the time to pick up your phone on your desk and dial another office. Cell phones were about as big as your lower arm. When I started my business, I had two landlines: one for my phone and one for my fax machine. Most business communications came through one of those two lines and most of the marketing happened through direct mail.

About five years into my business, all of this began to change. Websites became more than just an electronic billboard. There was a lot of talk about hits and bandwidth that not everyone clearly understood. What was clear was that the method of marketing was changing. What we call traditional marketing was becoming obsolete and digital marketing was on the rise. It started with websites. It then led to blogs and email marketing. It then morphed to social media, phone access to the internet, text messaging, video streaming, etc. What became clear was the delivery mediums were changing. What was not clear was if marketing strategies would change too.

I have been privileged to own, not just a business, but a marketing business during this time when the old ways became obsolete and the new marketing was ushered in. I am grateful for the lessons I have learned. Here are a few things I learned along the way.

Lesson #1: Capturing emotion in the moment is the key to the new marketing

The cornerstone of marketing has always been the ability to make a connection with customers. Digital marketing only heightened this. Content and the ability to comment became the new driver of customer engagement. I remember back in 2008 and the first time we wrote a story about a project one of our construction clients had recently completed. We posted it on their website and attached the link to an e-blast. Their web traffic tripled in 48 hours. I knew we were onto something. It wasn’t only that we had just caused their web traffic to spike, it was that we were making a connection with their customers and were able to measure it immediately. We knew who had looked at it, shared it and commented. This was the first thing I learned from this new marketing medium: any time you can connect with your customers immediately after a positive experience, don’t let the opportunity pass you by. Capture them in the moment. If you wait, you might miss the emotion and energy behind their acceptance of your work.

Lesson #2: The speed of delivery is equal to quality

Another big change in the way business is conducted has to do with the speed of delivery. We live in a world where everything is expected to be technology driven. That means that information is available instantly and decisions can be made just as quick as the information gets to you. As technology has sped up life, the expectation to find anything we want, order it and get it delivered immediately is as important as the quality of the product or service itself. This has impacted marketing. If you can deliver your product quicker than your competitor, you win an edge over them. Any time you gain an edge, it is marketable. There was a time when a customer would wait for weeks for you to deliver a product with the thought that quality was worth the wait. That has all changed. Now, speed is a driver in just about every transaction.

Lesson #3: Brand loyalty is challenged by a world of choices

We have more choices than we ever had before. There was a time when customers were loyal to a brand like they were married to it. A lot of that had to do with a lack of choice. You were either loyal to Chrysler, Ford or GM in your auto preferences, you were a Coke or a Pepsi drinker, you were a Mac or a Windows user. Technology has also challenged this for two reasons. First, we are a worldwide economy, not a regional one. You may be competing with competition that is halfway across the world. As long as delivery can be expedited, you can sell to just about anyone anywhere. Second, the digital age allowed new brands to ramp up their marketing and get in front of a larger audience at a much quicker rate than the old, traditional ways of marketing could accommodate. Old, established brands are challenged when young brands can on-ramp their marketing quickly. What happens when the consumer has more choices than before? Brand loyalty is challenged. You have to be much more intentional in your marketing to get a tech-savvy, always-looking-for-a-better-deal market to stay with you after an initial sale. This has caused some brands to ramp up their new offerings at a much faster pace than ever before (think about mobile phones as an example.) If they don’t market something new every few months, their brand will be pushed aside.

Lesson #4: You have to be ready to move because attitudes change very quickly

This is tied very much to the brand loyalty thoughts above, but technology moves information so quickly that this morning’s news will be obsolete by early afternoon. Trending opinions change constantly. This is one of the biggest lessons I have learned about marketing in this new economy: there is a difference between what people hold as values and the attitudes they have that is simply trending group think. Values stick for the rest of their lives. Attitudes change quite frequently. The trick in marketing is to catch the wave of trending attitudes without stepping on the values of your customers. This is a marketing dance that is getting ever so difficult to perform. Why? Because values often clash with the trending attitudes and explode across social media. Corporations are often called upon to lay aside the values of their customers in exchange for standing behind a trending cause that is simply the attitude of the moment. The results are disastrous. I have been privileged to help clients through some disasters and come out with the brand intact on the other end. You have to be ready to move with trending attitudes, but you cannot do so to the detriment of the values of your customer base.

I had a front row seat for this moment in history when the way we communicated changed. I was in the driver’s seat while my clients were trying to figure all this out and make it work though their marketing efforts. I am grateful for all of these lessons learned along the way, for they made me study my craft more so I could help my clients market themselves in new ways.