A.D.2020 The Age of Marketing EXTINCTION Part one

Marketing as you know it will no longer exist by 2020. And despite that 2020 sounds like a year from a space movie, it’s only 3-years away from right now.

Let me explain.

I started real marketing in the years 1989-91. Then it was all about getting people through the door, getting the place busy and making money. With fewer distractions it was easier yet strangely it never felt easy at the time.

By the time the web arrived I jumped online pretty early with my first business computer in 1991. It was on MS-DOS system and frankly it was tough to use so I put in the bottom of my wardrobe until I sold it many years later.

Around 95-96 I got a computer for my desktop. It changed everything for me because I now had the ability to print on demand. Despite the fact, it took a full day to print a couple of hundred flyers or letters I now had the freedom to execute a simple idea fast (in the early years I had to have everything printed at the local printers. They could take 3-4 weeks to print anything).

By 1997/98 I had created a website for my business. All I had to do was create it and then send my clients to it. The problem was most clients didn’t have computers or even emails then. I stuck at it. By the late 90s, something called SEO arrived.

SEO mastery in those days was very easy. I had page one of every search engine like Alta Vista, Northern light, Yahoo and many others.

My first online shop sold Nintendo games until I built a business I still have that supports the hair salon industry.

By the mid-2000s get rich quick marketers realised if you could get page one easily they could sell the mystery and magic of the web. This created a breed of ‘new’ experts in all kinds of things especially SEO. The problem was most expert’s had no expertise in most thing the expertise was needed. In those days it was still pretty easy to get past search engine rules.

This was one of the first times I remember in business when anyone with a mouse and computer could proclaim themselves as an expert in business.

I can't really speak for others but I can share with you the results from these guys I have personally seen in my office was disastrous in more than one case. Disastrous as in the investment and time put into a trend that would clearly change very fast and become harder and more difficult to manage.

Then arrived social media. A lot of the new ‘experts’ in SEO marketing either went and got a job or redressed themselves as Social Media experts. This has now peaked but has been catastrophic for many businesses. When I say catastrophic I am talking about from the perspective of real results.

I have seen literally dozen upon dozens of business come to the point of almost collapse on the back of advice from Social Media experts.

Today is 2016 and we are on the edge of the start of 2017.

What a year in marketing, marketing techniques and most important what is and is no longer working in marketing.

I think you’ll be shocked by some parts of what you read because some of what I will share is still held in the highest parts of marketing with ‘the experts’.

What I mentioned at the start of this white paper was how experts became experts on the back of grabbing hold of something new and creating mystery in the new and then selling that to others as a fix.

The real problem was no one what the solutions offered were really offered on the back of science. They were offered on the back of opinions that would feed needs and emotions for those that simply wanted a better life or business.

That has changed. Everything marketing has changed and reading this report hopefully be the start of your changes.

First let me be clear why you should listen to me.

I don’t believe in trends I believe in results.

When I first started my businesses in 1985 my reality was it paid or it didn’t pay. I never had big budgets for anything so every penny I spent had to bring in a much bigger reward otherwise, my mortgage would not be getting paid.

I had been fired again at this point so I had to create my own income – it was that simple. Since then I have created my own income and since then my core principle of marketing as a way to get busy has never changed.

If I spend a pound on my own marketing I always – without fail – expect £100 back. In my early days of business, I could never afford a mentor or guide so I would buy and read books. The problem was I am not a reader unless I am interested in the writer. I have one book on my shelf that is covered in brown tea and coffee rings that I paid £5 for in the late 90s. That single book was a small investment. The return has gone into the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years.

My core belief has never once changed.

To spend any money on marketing it has to deliver a return. Over the years I have probably worked with well over 400 industries. The advice I have given to my clients has gone into the tens of millions very easily.

And I never take risks.

And I never ride on the back of new trends.

And I never move away from my original core of business.

I do what works, I do what works as fast as it can and I put measurable results first and foremost.

Why?

Because that is what you want and anyone wants when running a business that is stressful enough without even more stress from failed strategic thinking.

There Are Huge Changes Coming (they are here already it’s just most haven’t noticed)

The following is simply a round-up of what I am seeing and what I can see coming. Knowing this is your opportunity to do something about it. It is your sounding to take action, take control and make sure you have what you should have in place to keep your investment into marketing strong.

Also, I want you to know what I am sharing with you is based on science NOT trends. It is all fully supported through measurements and actual experiments of years with human interactions at many levels with businesses. Also, some of what I am about to share is based on my own intuitive observation of what I see based on what I see with clients, clients results and feedback from clients.

Also, I read some of the most in-depth social, scientific and deeper level of marketing science you maybe won't have heard of or see on bookshelves.

The change

I started to notice subtle changes and big changes at first by simply observing people and their habits.

When I say people, I mean people in business first of all.

Most business people are driven by a desire to succeed and a fear of failure. They are also driven by the influence of the masses. Mass thought and mass movement.

Example; when Facebook marketing really started to become more and more apparent it wasn’t uncommon for big brands and other businesses to start advertising like this … www.Facebook.com/orangebeetle rather than like this … www.OrangeBeetle.com .

Doing this started with the few until the big brands started doing it. I am not sure when I noticed it but it was years ago and it was for www.facebook.com/kitkat. If you go to that link above at this moment of typing this they have 25,758,785 likes. That is a lot of likes.

The real question is this – do likes provide sales or an increase in sales?

If I went into the full science of this right now I would have to spend a week writing this so let me share what I know very quickly.

I am yet to see any highly liked pages create more sales, leads or enquiries. We have also had enough time to run, test and measure this now and the results are all suggesting that likes don’t increase sales.

So when I spoke above about mass thought and mass movement you can now see that despite the lack of results businesses still invest heavily on social media.

This isn’t the only problem facing anyone marketing. I say problem because most marketing being done today is still based on marketing that was taught as a process in colleges and universities decades ago.

So this year I have been studying the marketplace more than ever. I have tried to pull together thoughts in simple bullet points. If you read and digest what I am saying this will help you.

See Part Two

Yours

Alan Forrest Smith