Marketing became really complicated over the last decade.
So complicated that even career marketers found themselves scratching their heads.
So much new technology. So many metrics. So many algorithms.
And so many damn initializations:
SEO, SER, SEM, SMM, ABM, MAP, PPC, CPC, CPL, CPA, CTA, CTR, CMS, CRM, CRO, CLV, UV, UX, BR, GA, IP, ICP, KPI, ROI, ROAS, GTM, ETC, ETC.
Suddenly everybody was a specialist. Worse, marketers became technicians.
What emerged were formulaic approaches to marketing and promises for a brand of marketing that could justify its existence in the board room.
What go lost in the process, were the foundations great marketing is built upon.
Marketing had become a methodology. Modeled on the “science” of attribution and focused on digitally pestering prospects and flooding the internet with SEO-rich, content-light pages, marketing sacrificed creativity as the collateral damage of a new paradigm.
To quote Johnny Maestro from the ‘60’s group Brooklyn Bridge, it was “worst that could happen” to marketing.
With all the digital distractions and SEO hype, creativity became an afterthought to the multitude of marketing-like activities marketers were doing instead of the one thing that mattered most: making emotional connections between businesses and their prospects.
A Marketer’s Job
A marketer’s job is to influence/change market perceptions.
That’s it. Sure there are a lot of ancillary benefits to a marketer doing that successfully, which would fall into a marketer’s job description, but it doesn’t change the fact that the job is clear.
A marketer does that by articulating what differentiates a client’s offerings from the competition and finding ways to make an emotional connection between potential prospects and those offerings.
The emotion makes the connection memorable. Without it, prospects don’t buy.
It’s not complicated. But it is difficult, which may be why so many digital marketers embraced the “new” marketing methodologies instead of sticking with the proven difficult one. The new methodologies are also easy, quick to implement, and profitable (for the marketers promoting them, at least), which may also be why they have been so readily embraced.
The net result has been lots of companies putting out lots of shallow “content” focused on defining an item or process, comparing it to others out there, and describing how it works, what’s used for, and who should use it. The articles will be rich with “keywords” and written well enough to please a Google algorithm but not necessarily the prospects they’re trying to draw in.
And There’s the Rub
Far too often, companies are so focused on SEO, that they overlook the fact that their approach is actually alienating the prospects they’re competing for by getting them to click on vapid content.
Vapid content does nothing to influence/change market perceptions. Instead, it typically results in higher bounce rates (visitors abandoning their search because they don’t believe there is value to be gained or a connection to be made).
And what’s worse is that the companies focused on SEO will likely never realize the error of their ways because their metrics will record those clicks as an increase in traffic volume, making it appear that the SEO push is working and that the digital marketer who set up the program is doing a good job.
On top of that, the websites of the companies following these strategies will become increasingly cluttered with single purpose, SEO-rich, click-bait-like content that will not only diminish those companies abilities to control the user experience (UX) for their prospects, but actually make the UX worse for those prospects because of the increased layers of dead-end content.
In the end, frustrated users will be far less likelihood to engage with these companies, despite whatever increases in traffic volumes or “interest” in social media posts they may experience and despite the fact that they may rank higher for certain keywords and phrases.
So focus on articulating what differentiates your company’s offerings from those of the competition. And find ways to make an emotional connection between potential prospects and those offerings.
That’s how you’re going to influence/change market perceptions.
BTW, we’d be happy to help. So if you’re interested, just let us know what you hope to accomplish, and we’ll show you how you can.
Walter High has built a career from his proclivity for using marketing creativity as a tool for business growth. He is a multi-disciplined marketing expert with deep experience in conceptualizing and executing successful strategic branding, product marketing, and demand-gen/capture initiatives in B2B and B2C arenas. Contact him here.