What is the first thing you do when you watch a film on YouTube? For me it's clicking the SKIP Advert the same moment it's possible. I hate it. What is the first thing you do when you see a pop-up advert on a website? I desperately look for the 'close' box so that I can get rit of it. I hate them. What is the first thing you do when you receive newsletters you haven't signed up for? Well, you can report as SPAM, but you are very likely to dislike the company and the emails sent.
Advertising, in general, is something that we primarily accept since we know this is how media subsidizes the content, but think about it. If everybody hates it, how efficient is it then marketing-wise?
As mentioned in my previous article, the value of email marketing is also minimal. First of all, you get so many newsletters, and most you can't remember having signed up for. The content of the newsletters is fluttered with adverts, that we established a few seconds ago most people don't like - and even less react to. With opening rates of less than 20% and click rates of less than 2%, it's a fact that email marketing isn't very useful.
So what advertising in magazines? For me it's noise. It is messages that I haven't asked for, and of course, I understand that it subsidies the content, which is why I accept to have them. It's also evident that advertisers wouldn't continue using advertising if there wasn't any value for them. But how is that actually measured? For trade-media it's quite interesting that most are either free or very cheap. It's a fact that a lot of printers don't even want trade-magazines if they had to pay for them. So we are in a situation where advertising is not very useful.
I don't think you often see readers from a trade magazine calling a vendor and say "Hey, I saw your advertisement for the $100,000 nice printer, can you please send me one." - so what are the buyer patterns?
Everything starts with demand, and what creates that demand? I had breakfast this morning with my good friend and president of INKISH Sweden, Ulf Sunnberg and we both agreed, that obviously, the need comes from somewhere? Is it created in the media, at trade-shows, at user-events, salespeople, consultants, or mouth-to-mouth, in federations, or is the demand based on extremely specific needs? We spoke about this, and even with examples, we found it very difficult to establish from where demand is created.
It's clear that if you have a machine that breaks down, you will start looking for a new one if you need it. It's also clear that sometimes you may need to start doing your research since you have a particular problem that needs to be solved. However, the sources are probably, multiple, and therefore you can argue that email marketing and advertising is part of that marketing-mix that created the demand, right?
From a purely marketing perspective you can, however, ask yourself how many times do you have to market a product or service before it reaches a user that has changed from NOT having a demand to having a demand?
That leads us back to the stories we tell our clients about personalization, mass-customization, etc. But to me, it's even simpler. Do we as trade-media, film-channel, vendors, etc. know our customers and prospects well enough? Do we know when they need replacement of existing equipment? Do we know what troubles they have that we could eventually solve for them? Do we at all have the people on the ground, that know this in details?
One of the things I started to claim at LabelExpo 2019 in Brussels last year is the fact that I can't help thinking of always. We - INKISH, and maybe all trade-media don't know the printers very well. We sell advertising space in an old-fashion way with conversions, clicks, even strange subscription models, and we constantly talk to vendors who can support our poor economies to continue a mission that mostly has proven to fail. It's proven since opening rates are poor, but also the ROI's are poorly measurable.
We should know what the printers need, and then utilize this to the audience. It's like going to a rock concert where everybody is anticipating Jazz. Hardly a success, regardless of how great a performance the orchestra is delivering.
We have decided that we want to be the media on the earth that deliver the most valuable content to printers at all. The only way we can do this is by starting a conversation with the printers. I don't believe even membership organizations are in touch with the printers, and we end up spending a lot of time and money on writing, filming, podcasting, advertising, etc. to an audience who has NO interest in what we say.
Ulf Sunnberg and I also spoke about another quite interesting thing. With marketing people that are experts in marketing and communication, why haven't they come to the same conclusion as we did? Is it because the measurements we all use, have flattened to be all about numbers, that really doesn't' say anything about the quality of our deliveries? Have we come to a point where marketing and sales are totally misaligned and where the money spent doesn't support the overall mission?
My good friend and INKISH.NEWS contributor Andreas Weber wrote in response to my latest article that Marketing Automation could be a solution. Well, I'm afraid I have to disagree. When LEAN was the biggest buzz-word of all times, I wasn't sceptical about LEAN as such. I was sceptical because LEAN in many cases is about common sense. Marketing Automation may be more of what we have, maybe more tailored, maybe smarter, maybe cheaper, and maybe more efficient. But if you look at what has happened with automation and with the constant focus on optimization, we are more stressed than ever. We are less aligned as humans, and we don't need more of empty air, to be honest!
I have concluded that I want marketing to be about being accessible. I want to have in-depth information, I want to have fast facts, I want white-papers, I want to be able to be inspired, I want to be all the things that smart marketing people do today, but I don't want it to be thrown in my face wherever I go. I am sick and tired that everybody is "shouting" at me, and about things that I don't need (at least not for now). Then I want to know my reps, so they know, when the time is ready to hit me with the information that I need. I want the media that I consume to understand that I am not always in a buying mode. Sometimes I just need to learn, to be inspired - and most importantly, able to find the information I need, when I need it. The way we use marketing today is like in an old Arabic Bazar. The salespeople are shouting their offers to us in a way that is fun when visiting the bazar as a tourist for the first time. Very annoying when you have been there for a short time, and totally without effect if you live in it.
Marketing and communication need to be re-thought. We need something better, smarter, and more respectful. That's my opinion!
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