Warning: Outdated Marketing Strategies May Be Toxic to Your Business
December 30th, 2007 by Dominic Canterbury
There was a time when marketing was actually pretty simple.
Step 1 : Pay some talented folks to create your brand — you know, all those pretty words and pictures that “capture the essence” of your business.
Step 2: Beat that brand into the public mind by any means necessary.
In the olden days that strategy actually worked because… well because, what the hell else did the lowly consumer have to go by? Back then, useful information was so hard to come by, the Yellow Pages was actually valuable. But with the Information Superhighway being what it is, the Yellow Pages is nothing more than a tragic waste of colored paper.
These days, with just a few clicks the consumer can find much more than the glorified Yellow-Page ad that passes for many a business website, we can also find out what your customers are saying about you or at least what they’re saying about your competition.
No big news there, but consider how this throws a big hairy wrench in the old two-step marketing strategy.
Take for example, Seattle’s Beacon Plumbing.
Everyone in the region has seen their ads at least fifty times. They’ve doubtlessly achieved Old Marketing’s Holy Grail: Top of Mind Awareness. When Seattleites think plumbing, we think “Stop Freakn’… Call Beacon.”
Nice work, right? NO. Bad. BAD work, because when you do a Google search for “Beacon Plumbing” — to, say, find their phone number because you already recycled your Yellow Pages — you come up with a few of Beacon’s links then a link to a consumer review site in which about 90% of the reviews paint them as liars and crooks.
That’s rough. A lot of people who were about to call Beacon are now freakn’. Those nasty reviews are hard to miss and they’re a whole hell of a lot more credible than pretty ads. What would have been a success by Old-Marketing standards will almost assuredly do some serious, long-term damage.
So, what’s a modern business to do?
Embrace the change, my friends. Embrace the change! These days, image is (almost) nothing and substance is (almost) everything. Think about the plumber scenario. If some no-name plumber with the world’s ugliest website had fifty glowing user reviews, wouldn’t you go with that guy over Beacon? The good news is, substance is cheap. It just takes some extra thought and some actual caring. And today, more than ever, you will be rewarded for your effort.