When I was just a freshman in my first advertising class in college, I learned things about mass marketing and advertising and how my favorite thing since sliced bread – DVR – was going to take away our jobs forever. This hit something in me, and not because I thought we should take away DVRs or something ridiculous like that. I decided that I wanted to be a marketer that reached people how they wanted to be reached.
I started reading books about Google and their conscious effort to “not be evil” and understood that to the core. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com and another hero of mine said,
“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”
My calling was easily what we now call social media and what we could one day call inbound marketing or something depending on the next platform of where this will exist.
Since then, I’ve read books such as The Thank You Economy. Gary Vaynerchuk instills this concept of customer service and a great product. It wasn’t until today’s “aha” moment when I realized that people don’t actually think this way by default!
This is understandable, though, for some. You could come up with dozens of excuses, and that’s good, because at least you’ve just created a list of places to start! Mine?
Excuse: My company is too large and segmented, I’m public relations and have no clear communication paths to sales or customer service.
Solution: I will start with the personal connections I have in each area as well as reaching out to a digital manager in each business to see if there are other connections to bridge.
Excuse: My company makes tons of weird things and I don’t know what people will be looking for and talking about online aside from the exact business name.
Solution: I will start with the businesses with the most potential for growth by reaching out to digital marketers and sales departments to try to bridge online and offline departments and will focus on energy, sustainability and innovation topics
How will you address your excuses for not properly engaging?
