Why Are You Marketing - I Am The Future Pt 1
You were lied to about marketing and you probably fell for it.
Marketing that is, the reality of what marketing actually is.
What is the future of marketing and does the future exist?
I tried to take some time out from marketing recently and take my mind elsewhere. My nature when I get stuck or lost is to strip everything back to the start to the very beginning and try to understand what things really are.
When I look at marketing I asked the questions what am I doing and why am I doing this thing named marketing? There has to be a reason for doing anything, there has to be a reason for marketing anything.
The reason for most is usually sales driven yet the sales are really driving by something else. If we are a smaller business person we have gone into business, secondly to create a good income and build cash reserves. This gives us the life we want and need. Then the real first reason we do this is for happiness. If the sales don’t arrive we are not happy. Unhappiness can lead us down dark paths and that is the last place we want to be when we have a business.
Being in business should and my be rewarding. If it isn’t why are we even in business? The reality is we can probably find a job that will pay us more than our business if we are in the struggle and not making anything pay.
This is the point when we really need to ask the core question of why am I marketing?
There are reasons people get into marketing.
I do marketing to get rich.
In my experience, anyone driven by money and moment only rarely make any money. Those that makes claims to make money this way are usually only making money from the gullible and over-trusting.
Getting rich is never usually the goal of the rich. Riches as in cash is the by-product of success. That is delivering a service or products that over-deliver the invisible factor that stimulates the 4th dimension in the buyer. It’s that so-called X-factor moment.
Like when I got my first Apple product. Like any visit to my Apple store. Like any new Apple product, I buy. I always have a stimulation moment that creates a unique sticky loyalty that keeps me firmly attached to that brand.
Getting rich was never the drive of Apple. Creating greatness driving by the desire to be loved and serve was always the core driver of Apple.
I do marketing because I am supposed to do it.
The reason for marketing has to be a real reason. From what I have seen and experienced for the past three decades and more and especially the past 5-8 years marketing as we know it is dead. But what do we know about marketing? Those that do marketing because they are supposed to do marketing simply copy what others are doing or teaching. They install a system that they have been told should be followed, relied on and copy and pasted. Even when the results are low and sometimes in the negative they still insist on doing the same old ‘marketing’ day in, day out. Despite the fact this is mostly counterproductive a robotic and lazy side to the marketing man has been developed, trained and controlled through systems that are really just a framework rather than a commandment as such.
This type of marketing is usually very costly, very time consuming and usually loaded with waste. Financial waste, human resource waste.
I once visited a company with 14 marketing men in a single large office space. They did marketing and were practicing a huge money losing exercise in the process. I helped to reduce the team down to just four whilst increasing the leads, sales and profits of that same company. We even got the company marketing spend down so dramatically it gave them more cash to spend on infrastructure.
Doing marketing because you are supposed to do marketing is a huge mistake and a teaching of the educated not the business mind. The business mind wants to see success, get rewarded and build happiness.
Doing marketing as a process and system rarely works when it comes to creating big business for this new millennium.
I do marketing to help create a successful business through delivering a much in demand solution that gives me the happiness reward my family and I deserve for all of the hard work.
This is pure marketing. These types never use the word marketing. They don’t think about marketing. They are driven by the search. That is what the consumer is already searching for, what they want, what they are demanding. It could be a common problem, it might be a niche issue with millions of followers but the fill a demand. Inventing the better, the progressive and refining the great to become the very best.
Uber saw a problem, they saw a huge demand and filled it. The huge amount of people that grab a taxi daily wanted a fait price and got sick of being ripped-off. They fixed the problem and don’t even own cars! Now they are the richest taxi company on the planet without owning any taxis.
This is the reward. This is the kind of reward that builds happiness. This happiness is intuitively designed and fills a gap in demand and delivers a perfect solution.
What are your marketing people thinking about?
Are they still marketing your business like marketers or are they thinking distinctively? Have they stripped everything back to what marketing really is or are they following the routine?
Marketing that works in the new millennium looks nothing like what marketers talk about. It isn’t systems, it isn’t endless online content, it isn’t a website or SEO. Marketing is all about filling a human need and then delivering something incredible to the consumer.
Want proof that you no longer need ‘marketing’?
Ask Kylie Jenner that has become the USAs first ‘under-age’ billionaire without doing any of the marketing you are probably doing. How did she do that?
Some will say posting on Instagram. That might have some truth but the real truth is she did it through giving consumers exactly what they wanted by relating to them and having an empathetic approach that made her one of them. All she did was share her secret to fuller lips. Instagram was her vehicle to carry the message.
If you want to create marketing greatness you must strip back what you are doing, ask the why question of what you are doing and then build up your processes again. If you don’t do this you will simply be another company doing the same old thing that everyone and anyone is doing and being told to do by marketing men that are totally out of touch with marketing.
The above is taken from the powerful Keynote presentation called …
I Am The Future
A 90/120-minute presentation designed to stimulate greater thinking in your team that results in bigger results for your company. This keynote is also taken from a one-day training program.