Three things marketers need to bin
Stop doing crap because you've always crap
Marketing and advertising seem stuck in the past. And not the good romantic past you get all rose-tinted nostalgic about, but the crusty old grey past where we just do the same old boring shit over and over because we’ve always done that same old boring shit over and over. Here are a few things we need to put in the bin, right fucking now.
Segments
Fucking customer segments. Everyone wants a newsletter or an ad being fired off into the eyeholes of 73 highly individualised segments to really capitalise on what every single special person specifically wants at that exact moment in time. The thing is, you only sell sausages, and all your customers just want sausages. They come to you for sausages. Just tell ‘em you have some new fucking sausages for sale.
The bulk of customers aren’t that different, you probably don’t offer that much (and if you do, your message is just going to be “We sell bloody everything!”) and you’d almost definitely benefit from just getting your simple message out to more people.
I’m not even going to get into the fact that you figured out those segments either through weird creepy tracking of your customers around the internet or some bullshit survey that 5% of your audience filled in.
We aren’t all as distinct or special as we’ve been led to believe. Sorry.
Relationships
Most people, surprise surprise, don’t really have – or want – a relationship with a company or a brand. Just sell me the thing I want and bugger off. No I don’t care what your mission or your goal or your vision is. And if you disappear, sure, I’ll be inconvenienced but I’ll move on.
I’ve been telling clients this for years so it was great to see the awesome Louis Greiner of Stand The Fuck Out (STFO) say this very thing in response to yet more cringe-fest pod-driven horseshit on LinkedIn. I’ll let Louis make this point because he nails it better than I ever could:
USPs
Selling points that are truly unique are rare. Most companies are just selling the same thing others are selling. In the science world, a lot of companies sell reagents and, of course, they all claim their reagents are the best reagents. But more often than I’d like to admit, it’s literally the same fucking product. And sometimes that’s fine!
You don’t always have to have the most unique product ever. In fact, it’s unlikely you will. Even if you do, that once-in-a-lifetime USP will mean shit all if you’re not telling enough people about it. And that’s the point: you don’t need to focus on uniqueness so much as you need to focus on the volume and quality of stuff going out. If you’ve got a world-changing product but you don’t shout about it, you’re going to be outdone by the generic seller spending more budget on interesting creative and getting it out louder and clearer on better channels.
Move on from your inevitably unoriginal selling point and focus on good, loud creative that addresses a problem or a need.
Sheesh. Glad I got that out. I swear we keep spending fortunes on agencies who have marketing in their DNA to segment customers, creating fancy relationship-building strategy docs and fabricating USPs just because that’s what we’ve always done. (And marketing agencies have to keep telling clients it’s all essential because that crap keeps the company directors driving shiny cars.)
Just keep it simple:
Understand why the bulk of your audience comes to you
Your message is the answer to why your customers come to you
Have a product that’s actually good
Have a genuine personality and maintain that
Communicate briefly and regularly making sure your message is always clear
Hire smart creatives to help share your simple message in different ways
Okay, that’ll do.
At a loss for words? Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty.
Give me a shout