It’s no secret that marketing has undergone immense changes in the past decade or two (if you can remember that far back) but I want to rewind even further to over a century ago when department store mogul John Wanamaker said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Today, with all the fancy marketing automation tools, more social media platforms than I can count and enough data to fill the largest data centres on a weekly basis, many scoff at that concept as we know exactly what money is wasted and what is not.
BUT, today we congratulate ourselves with a CTR of 5%, an email open rate of 30% and a prospect to lead conversion of 10%. So why are we laughing at that quote when we know what money is being wastes but we are wasting even more of it and think it’s a good thing.
This thinking can be tied to the rise of digital marketing, which has caused marketers to become very tactical and just use the “next big thing”. Now before I get comments from the haters, digital marketing is a key tactic in every campaign but in many cases very little thought is given to the goals behind most digital marketing efforts. It’s a mentality of let’s get it out there and optimize but we can start at a much better place with a strategy.
Back in the golden age of Madison Avenue, or the “Mad Men” era, they built successful marketing campaigns on a strong message and engaging creative but more importantly they did research on the buyer, tested their concepts and made sure whatever they did stood out from the noise and competition.
We need to get back to marketing best practices. We need to build strategies that align with the buyer and their journey (which they now control). We need to create messaging that engages and is not only optimized for search.
And, that’s what this book is about. How to build a wildly successful marketing campaign based on a strategy not a collection of tactics optimized for minor improvements along the way.