Life used to be so easy.  But, as they say, change is the one constant.  The marketing world, too,  continues to evolve.  It use to be easy to promote your business.  You basically had radio, TV and print options.  Even the web has changed… Web 2.0 is creating a completely new culture - world wide!  Folks no longer rely on (much less trust) traditional news sources; they are making a major shift to get information of all types on their computers and on their smart phones.  Just as I’m writing on this blog, millions of people are doing the same or engaging in some form of online activity.  I know in my circles (middle-age) many are scratching their heads about social media - they are, I’ll say, intimidated.  Some feel it’s a fad, some are diving in and others are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what develops.  Well, in my opinion, it aint goin’ away - it’s not a fad.  The technology today will, of course, evolve, but, the new culture of how people communicate and the new online communities that are being created will continue to grow and mature.

What’s most interesting tot me is how marketing now has to be interactive.  It can no longer be an “outbound” set of tactics.  It’s now a mix of outbound and inbound marketing tactics.  In fact, I believe inbound marketing is where businesses must focus serious attention.  Hubspot is an excellent source for information and on inbound marketing - in fact, they have an Inbound Marketing University!

If a business does not get “in the path” of the communications, doesn’t participate online, they will be invisible.  Best practices today involve putting information online, driving people to it using traditional (outbound) tactics, attracting  people already online, creating interest and dialogue.  When this occurs, and assuming the information is valuable or interesting, the business will be sought after - creating an inbound flow of traffic.  This is why Google places so much emphasis on the value of  external links - the more referring links a site has, the more implication the site truly is a credible resource.  Once a business gets inbound, then the follow up and ongoing engagement becomes key.  But, this is a subject for another post (and prior posts).  I’ll end this with a question:  what is your inbound marketing strategy?

The recent political debates and on-going campaign speeches have similar themes; and each party has taken similar positions.  Yet, both parties stress how different they each are.  Obviously, there are some clear differences, yet, many are subtle - at least as far as what can be understood from the media.  Perhaps that’s why the polls are fairly even (depending on your source).  But, one thing I notice is that all the rhetoric boils down to “sound bites”.

This causes me to think about communications, in general, and about message retention levels.  I’m sure everyone reading this understands that only a fraction of what we read, watch or listen to is retained (and the older I get, the lower the fraction!).  In business, marketing and advertising messages face the same challenge as the candidates face getting their message across.

The latest research claims that we are exposed to between 3000 and 3500 marketing or advertising messages a day!  Currently, many of these messages can be attributed to the current political environment - we can’t get away from them.  Campaigns are spending tens of millions trying to get their message across.  This is an excessive demand for our attention.  Just as with marketing and advertising, we’ll likely respond only to those messages that reach an emotional cord within us.

What can we learn from this?  At a minimum, unless we have a lot of money for advertising our message repeatedly, which is unaffordable for the majority of businesses, it is extremely difficult to get your message to stick.  We can also learn that our communications must resonate with our audience emotionally and be different than our competitors.  This isn’t easy to do.  I believe it’s why most advertising under performs.  Not enough time is devoted to truly developing compelling content for marketing.  Many that advertise are looking for immediate results and do not systematically test their messages like a political campaign would.

I welcome comments or examples of successful attempts at developing compelling, unique messages - and, I’d be just as interested in what other marketing lessons we can learn from the political campaigns.