What has changed in the past 4 years in B2B marketing?
Change is not always obvious when you're in the middle of it. Looking back over the past few years, here are a few things that I've noticed:
Marketing automation and lead nurturing has replaced old fashioned email marketing
Good news - more relevant, targeted communications. Powerful reporting that let's you talk numbers with confidence.
Bad news - requires excellence in content creation, which is HARD and TIME CONSUMING. So never mind the technology, it's still hard work to engage people and keep them engaged.
Social media has gone from "something we should do" to "something we're doing"
Good news - participation and experimentation are the only way to learn with this, so many brands are actually starting to do something meaningful. See, you never needed the "Social Media Guru". Just a little courage.
Bad news - It's the new shiney corporate thing...everything now has to be "social media". People feel overwhelmed with the volume and frequency of communication. The signal to noise ratio is terrible.
We've gone through the GFC, and as always, marketing budgets get slashed first
Good news - even people who used to have big budgets have started to look at more creative ways of marketing. Including social media. See point one.
Bad news - Well, I know I for one would have loved to have had a little more to spend...
Video is emerging as the killer app
Good news: People were never designed to write and read, we were designed to talk, look and listen. Now that anyone can make and publish video at little or no cost, there is a whole new world of opportunity opening up to generate interest, build a brand and convert prospects. And if I was 20, I would go head first into that business.
Bad news: As with everything online, the barrier to entry is low and so is a lot of the quality. This is not an easy game and requires people with skills to write stories, direct and create interesting stuff. No, I don't subscribe to the idea that all you need is a flip camera...
Have you seen any other trends and changes? What have I missed?
We’re all drowning, and all you do is raise the water level…
I started this blog in 2005, with a pretty clear purpose; share my ideas at no cost to a global audience, profile myself as a marketer and participate in a community that was vibrant, creating fantastic professional connections. Connection based on a shared interest in Marketing. Along the way, I found out where people lived and sometimes we exchanged emails of a more social nature.
We've built relationships, and I've learned more from you, (complete strangers mostly at the other end of the world) than I could have hoped to have learned in ANY other way.
Now here is the thing that bothers me....I've stopped participating the way I used to. I don't read the blogs I used to read. I don't really comment on blogs anymore. My attention switched to Twitter and Facebook rather than an RSS reader; after all, everyone in my network would use these places to promote what they had to say anyway. That was the theory.
I think I'm going back to me RSS reader and here is why. Twitter and Facebook have polluted the stream of information I actually value from the people I follow. Most blog posts are on-topic. Mostly, no more than one a day. Most Twitter post are off-topic and posted many times a day...How am I going to keep up? And why do you make it so hard for me to find the stuff I want to read?
Facebook is even more difficult. Perfect for my personal life, but I don't really want to share my personal life with my blogging friends or work mates. It's not what binds us. It's what binds me to my family and personal friends. I don't really want to read what my colleagues do on their holidays either, or that they rode their bikes this morning... not because I don't care about them, but because it is not what binds us.
Maybe it is because I don't get it. Or maybe our fundamental social make up hasn't changed and we are still made up of different personas; private and public. I'm a father, son and brother. I'm a manager at a company. I'm a participant in a global marketing discussion. I'm (very infrequently) a musician.
But I don't talk to my mother or music buddies about marketing, because it doesn't interest them. I don't talk to my boss about my private life (in any detail) because he's not interested in the detail and possibly likes to have a little distance. We are selective who we share information with, because (among other things) it makes us more interesting and relevant to the people we share the information with.
Relationships are built on the things we have in common, the things that bind us. I can't have personal relationships with the everyone I know. There is no time, for one. Of course work friends can become close friends or even family. (and I should know).
The challenge for all of us was (and is) that there is only so much you can read and create and still do your day job. It's just too much, and I don't think I'm alone.
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