If you’re using traditional marketing hype to attract your audiences – you’re at risk of joining the woolly mammoth.
I know – we were all taught to push our value and features and cool stuff out there for all the world to see. That’s where Me Me Me Marketing began.
Today’s business will go extinct with yesterday’s marketing.
You can have the best value out there, but if you continue to approach marketing in the same old way – no one will listen. Why? Because buyers don’t want to hear the same old Woolly Mammoth roar. They don’t CARE about your old wooly self. They care about themselves; their needs, their businesses, their perceptions.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Today’s buyers don’t need you for anything. They can research, compare, select and buy products without you being involved. So get over yourself and evolve before Natural Selection takes you out of the market.
When we Evolve our Marketing – we have a GREAT opportunity to grow our business.
Today’s connected world gives marketers the best opportunity ever to create true relationships with their customers. How many times have you wanted to ask target buyers questions, test your messages and more? Now we have an environment to do just that with customers and prospects in current and totally new target markets. But only if we shift our approaches and patterns, ceasing the bombardment of the past ME, ME, ME and focusing on quality, targeted, customer-relevant conversations. That’s right – conversations – the two-way kind. Not just the Woolly Mammoth roaring for all who listen.
That doesn’t mean trying to prove we’re perfect or boasting about our cool stuff. That’s the fastest way to stop a new relationship in its tracks. Remember your last date? Think about it…
Instead of focusing on you and your products in all their glory, here are a few key tips to gain credibility and create a real relationship with audience members who will buy your stuff.
Tell the truth. Making false promises, creating fake success stories and all the other bogus claims won’t get your business ahead. It will sink your opportunities. Today’s audiences are too smart and too well informed to fall for that fake crap. Stop it. Tell the truth, honestly. If you don’t have the value to tell the truth, then go back to the drawing board and find it.
Cut the hype. People are just plain overloaded with hype and SPAM. It’s the bane of social media and the backlash is becoming significant for those who continue to play that same old game. Hype marketing has gone the way of the Dodo bird (she lived next door to the Woolly Mammoth). You push your audiences away with big flashy claims. That’s especially true with interactive social media as well as your blogs and e-communications. Inform and advise. Leave the hype to that oft lambasted used car salesman.
Show yourself, warts and all. We are programmed to think we have to show perfection for our products, services, leaders and our company. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. We all know that none of us are perfect—our businesses aren’t perfect and neither are our products and services. So many business disasters could be avoided—after the incident happens—if we simply told the truth about our flaws. Open the kimono and be real. That’s whom your audiences want to know—the real people and culture behind the company image. People trust the company that is 100 percent open, above board, honest and, well, slightly imperfect.
The Woolly Mammoth stuck to his ways and look what happened to him….. are you ready to evolve to attract your Digital Buyers?
