The Secret Diary of a Bonafide Marketing Genius

Dear Diary,
Is it me or does it seem like a lot of marketers have lost their way lately?

Don’t get me wrong. I recognize that what was once a pretty simple discipline has become remarkably complicated thanks to competitive pressure, media fragmentation, technological advancement, migration from one screen to three, the rise of the Digital Native, globalization, broadband, and the extinction of the Dodo. Still, marketing does not need to be so complicated…   and marketers need not get sucked into over-hyped craptastic marketing just because “the competition is doing it” or because Joe Schmoe Marketing Expert says you’d better get on the f**king train or else! [ahem]

Listen, I understand that it’s easier than ever for consumers to TUNE SHIT OUT and harder than ever for advertisers—even those with an obscenely large media budget AND an amazing product—to capture mind-share in a media-fragmented/over-saturated/24/7 world.

Now, more than ever, it’s a good idea to stop all that spray and pray nonsense and GET BACK TO BASICS.

No, I don’t mean start drinking vodka for breakfast and banging your secretary. Those days—for most of us anyway—are over. I mean forget all of the myriad options and catchy buzzwords for a minute and focus on what marketing, at its core, is all about: getting the right message to the right market using the right media at the right moment.

For shits and giggles, let’s focus specifically on this part of the above statement: “to the right market“. Any decent marketing strategy starts with the market—or target audience, if you prefer. Sadly, too many marketing programs forget [or ignore] this crucial part of the equation, typically because they don’t have the patience to go through a real market segmentation exercise or they don’t have the cahones to zero in on a segment narrower than “18-44 year old men or women anywhere in the United States”. [*sigh*]

The problem is that a wimpy or overly broad definition of the market leads to wimpy or overly broad [and therefore underly effective] marketing. What kind of message resonates with “18-44 year old men or women anywhere in the United States”? A wimpy, overly broad one! What kind of media will effectively reach “18-44 year old men or women anywhere in the United States”? Spray & pray, baby! At what moment are we most likely to reach “18-44 year old men or women anywhere in the United States” (when are they most vulnerable to wanting/needing your product or service in other words)? Who the f**k knows?!

Are you hearing me, Diary?

How about we all take a collective break from chasing every shiny new object or grasping on to tried-and-true-but-not-all-that-effective marketing strategies because we’re overwhelmed with options and underwhelmed with smarts?

How about we just slow down for a minute?

How about we FOCUS? Think? Maybe even breathe once in awhile?

How about we use all that fancy social technology to actually LISTEN to our customers for a change instead of shoving more annoying messages down their throats?

How about we use it to actually improve our products? Our customer service? Our humanity?

But I digress (what else is new)…

Mass marketing is mass poopy, Diary. Stinky, ugly, and generally something you cant wait to flush away.

I sure do hope that the Marketing 2.0 world isn’t built on a mountain of poopy. But I gotta run now… there’s a new, shiny object calling my name…