This morning, I spoke with a group from the Marketing Executives Networking Group here in Chicago. Their focus areas were all over the map, from financial services to education to CPG, tech, and public relations.
I was, of course, the heretic brought in to talk social media and discuss some of the shifts happening in the business world. But I had a conversation afterward with a gentleman named Don Drews, who heads up a marketing consultancy called Courageous Marketing. He shared with me that he’s going back to school to get his PhD, because he wants to teach marketing. Awesome, I said.
But his question: with all that’s changing, what am I going to teach about marketing?
He’s shining a light on something that we don’t talk about much. We talk about how businesses are evolving, and I even talked a bit about how to hire for social media roles in companies. But how are we preparing the new marketers, the new communicators, for entering the business world as we’re now building it?
This is a hard question for me to answer if we’re comparing it to “traditional” marketing curriculum, because I didn’t focus on communications in school (I majored in music). So I’d be hard pressed to come up with comparisons that are relative.
I do think we need to teach marketers some tenets of social media culture and implementation, including:
- How the balance shift in consumer voice impacts corporate presence online
- Why paying attention and listening is fundamental to social media success, period
- The realities of culture shift, and how they need to be the starting place for many organizations
- The importance of not sticking social media in the marketing silo, but seeding it organization-wide
- Why good branding still matters, and which parts of brand presence you control
Of course, that includes talk about the tactics and execution, but later. After we’ve established a bit of a foundation for the role of social media in business as a whole, right?
But here’s where I need you. These are some of the questions we need to answer:
- What elements of traditional marketing and communications will and should endure along side social media?
- What’s obsolete about our teaching of marketing to date, and how do we evolve it?
- What should we be teaching marketers about social media, irrespective of the tools themselves?
- If you had new minds to shape about the landscape of communications in business as it will look five years from now, what would you want them to come away knowing, believing, and equipped to implement?
Let’s talk about this. This is the seed of some potentially big ideas. What say you?
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Tomorrow’s marketers need to be given a very clear definition of spam across all online mediums and then be told they’ll be expected to adhere to it.
Tomorrow’s marketers need to be given a very clear definition of spam across all online mediums and then be told they’ll be expected to adhere to it.
Irrespective of the tools and theories, the fundamental shift that should occur with teaching marketing, IMO, is the “attitude” that the students go out with.
Students should be taught to change and learn in the real world in a more rapid fashion. Their approach should be on of “application in real time”, learning new tools and analyzing on the go.
Marketing now resembles entrepreneurship in terms of exploration and risk taking, resembles software development in terms of iterations …
The rate of evolution in the field of marketing has accelerated. Students need to be ready to take that on and run with it.
Irrespective of the tools and theories, the fundamental shift that should occur with teaching marketing, IMO, is the “attitude” that the students go out with.
Students should be taught to change and learn in the real world in a more rapid fashion. Their approach should be on of “application in real time”, learning new tools and analyzing on the go.
Marketing now resembles entrepreneurship in terms of exploration and risk taking, resembles software development in terms of iterations …
The rate of evolution in the field of marketing has accelerated. Students need to be ready to take that on and run with it.
Marketing curricula ought to include aspects of sociology — gerontology in particular.
Popular opinion I am hearing (and which I agree) is that newspapers and books as we know them today will remain in their current form, plus or minus some cosmetic changes here or there, for another generation — until today’s senior citizens have passed, and perhaps into a segment of the Baby Boomer/Generation Jones population.
But the flipside is sextogenarians are the fastest growing segment of new American Facebook users; sixtysomething women, especially.
So, are today’s marketing students learning with real-time web work about how to engage seniors on current tools like Facebook and future tools as they are released, but also respecting the daily ritual of reading the morning newspaper over a cup of coffee with friends in the across-town lounge?
Marketing curricula ought to include aspects of sociology — gerontology in particular.
Popular opinion I am hearing (and which I agree) is that newspapers and books as we know them today will remain in their current form, plus or minus some cosmetic changes here or there, for another generation — until today’s senior citizens have passed, and perhaps into a segment of the Baby Boomer/Generation Jones population.
But the flipside is sextogenarians are the fastest growing segment of new American Facebook users; sixtysomething women, especially.
So, are today’s marketing students learning with real-time web work about how to engage seniors on current tools like Facebook and future tools as they are released, but also respecting the daily ritual of reading the morning newspaper over a cup of coffee with friends in the across-town lounge?
I think learning traditional marketing is important still so people know how to form a functioning campaign with multiple mediums. However, I will admit that most of what I know I learned from “real world experience,” reading blogs and books (not my textbooks).
As a marketer today, the best thing someone can do to advance their career and get better at performing certain marketing functions like social media, etc. is to be an active learner. There is so much going on today and everything changes and moves fast (primarily due to technology). Luckily, those starting college now are often pretty tech savvy anyway from growing-up with many of these technologies.
College gives you a basic foundation, but the real info comes from rolling-up your sleeves and jumping in.
I think learning traditional marketing is important still so people know how to form a functioning campaign with multiple mediums. However, I will admit that most of what I know I learned from “real world experience,” reading blogs and books (not my textbooks).
As a marketer today, the best thing someone can do to advance their career and get better at performing certain marketing functions like social media, etc. is to be an active learner. There is so much going on today and everything changes and moves fast (primarily due to technology). Luckily, those starting college now are often pretty tech savvy anyway from growing-up with many of these technologies.
College gives you a basic foundation, but the real info comes from rolling-up your sleeves and jumping in.
Amber
I think tomorrow’s marketers need to be taught how to think critically. The smartest folks I’ve met in the marketing world all had one thing in common: They could conceptually think through a problem and arrive at one or more possible solutions. It is a shame that marketing students are not forced to study Socrates — learn to use a Socratic approach to thinking… I think it would make them much better prepared for an industry that is reinventing itself every 10 years or so. My 02.
@TomMartin
Amber
I think tomorrow’s marketers need to be taught how to think critically. The smartest folks I’ve met in the marketing world all had one thing in common: They could conceptually think through a problem and arrive at one or more possible solutions. It is a shame that marketing students are not forced to study Socrates — learn to use a Socratic approach to thinking… I think it would make them much better prepared for an industry that is reinventing itself every 10 years or so. My 02.
@TomMartin
What elements of traditional marketing and communications will and should endure along side social media?
I firmly believe that every marketing graduate should have a firm grasp of marketing and communications STRATEGY. Our universities are focusing on the tools all too often lately.
What’s obsolete about our teaching of marketing to date, and how do we evolve it?
Wow. I can only speak to my own education in this matter, but I found a great deal of surprising information useful once I “got into the real world”. I’ve worked in PR, telecommunications (marcomm and corpcomm), email marketing and social networking so far – and I’ve pulled from my Retail Marketing, Market Research, Marketing Strategy, Integrated Marketing Communications classes, just to name a few.
I won’t outright suggest eliminating anything, but I do think that we can evolve the tools we’re teaching young marketers to use by teaching them HOW to use these tools, instead of just the basics of the tools themselves. We need to do a better job of teaching young marketers how to “tie it all together”.
What should we be teaching marketers about social media, irrespective of the tools themselves?
We should be teaching them the “rules of the road”. It’s one thing to sign up for Twitter (for example), but something completely different to know the tool well enough, or the “rules of the road” well enough, to begin to know how to use that tool in a business context.
If you had new minds to shape about the landscape of communications in business as it will look five years from now, what would you want them to come away knowing, believing, and equipped to implement?
Honestly, the most important thing I would teach my students would be how to THINK. So often in our schools these days, the kids that will be in college 5-10 years out aren’t being taught how to critically think, or figure something out on their own. I really do fear that the young marketers hitting the market in 5-10 years will be challenged from day 1 – not from the responsibilities, but from the lack of preparation their study methods have given them.
We, as a nation, need to teach our students how to think for themselves, how to critically reason, how to think of a problem from multiple angles, and how to take ownership and bring ideas to the table, instead of relying on others to do the heavy mental lifting for them.
My closing is a bit general, perhaps, but it’s equally as applicable to a marketing student as it is to an Engineer.
What elements of traditional marketing and communications will and should endure along side social media?
I firmly believe that every marketing graduate should have a firm grasp of marketing and communications STRATEGY. Our universities are focusing on the tools all too often lately.
What’s obsolete about our teaching of marketing to date, and how do we evolve it?
Wow. I can only speak to my own education in this matter, but I found a great deal of surprising information useful once I “got into the real world”. I’ve worked in PR, telecommunications (marcomm and corpcomm), email marketing and social networking so far – and I’ve pulled from my Retail Marketing, Market Research, Marketing Strategy, Integrated Marketing Communications classes, just to name a few.
I won’t outright suggest eliminating anything, but I do think that we can evolve the tools we’re teaching young marketers to use by teaching them HOW to use these tools, instead of just the basics of the tools themselves. We need to do a better job of teaching young marketers how to “tie it all together”.
What should we be teaching marketers about social media, irrespective of the tools themselves?
We should be teaching them the “rules of the road”. It’s one thing to sign up for Twitter (for example), but something completely different to know the tool well enough, or the “rules of the road” well enough, to begin to know how to use that tool in a business context.
If you had new minds to shape about the landscape of communications in business as it will look five years from now, what would you want them to come away knowing, believing, and equipped to implement?
Honestly, the most important thing I would teach my students would be how to THINK. So often in our schools these days, the kids that will be in college 5-10 years out aren’t being taught how to critically think, or figure something out on their own. I really do fear that the young marketers hitting the market in 5-10 years will be challenged from day 1 – not from the responsibilities, but from the lack of preparation their study methods have given them.
We, as a nation, need to teach our students how to think for themselves, how to critically reason, how to think of a problem from multiple angles, and how to take ownership and bring ideas to the table, instead of relying on others to do the heavy mental lifting for them.
My closing is a bit general, perhaps, but it’s equally as applicable to a marketing student as it is to an Engineer.
My formal education is in English, law, and creative writing, so I may not be one to talk. After a solid liberal arts education. I think it is more important than ever to get back to basics. Why do products exist? Who are you making your product for? What are their lives like? If you keep coming back to that, and you get some of the quantitative tools that help you win the occasional argument, my guess is you will be prepared to do great things. You pick up tools and media on the fly.
Dan Weiden, whose agency did so much to build Nike, probably says it all better than me: http://bit.ly/91fBsG
My formal education is in English, law, and creative writing, so I may not be one to talk. After a solid liberal arts education. I think it is more important than ever to get back to basics. Why do products exist? Who are you making your product for? What are their lives like? If you keep coming back to that, and you get some of the quantitative tools that help you win the occasional argument, my guess is you will be prepared to do great things. You pick up tools and media on the fly.
Dan Weiden, whose agency did so much to build Nike, probably says it all better than me: http://bit.ly/91fBsG
Your commentary struck me as poignant and timely because I just heard from my daughter, who is studying business and journalism at Indiana University. She said, “Dad, I am so SICK of hearing about social media! Every professor tells us it’s important, but they can’t tell us why!”
You ask a lot of good questions, big questions, Amber and it would take a novel to answer them but just let me say that the fundamentals ARE the same and we would be doing a disservice to students to tell them differently. When we forget that we have something like the 1999 Internet bust.
Pax, Mark
Your commentary struck me as poignant and timely because I just heard from my daughter, who is studying business and journalism at Indiana University. She said, “Dad, I am so SICK of hearing about social media! Every professor tells us it’s important, but they can’t tell us why!”
You ask a lot of good questions, big questions, Amber and it would take a novel to answer them but just let me say that the fundamentals ARE the same and we would be doing a disservice to students to tell them differently. When we forget that we have something like the 1999 Internet bust.
Pax, Mark
I was trained as a journalist and now work in PR, and I think one of the important elements of traditional media that needs to remain is the ability to tell a compelling story. And a story that’s factual and accurate, too.
I was trained as a journalist and now work in PR, and I think one of the important elements of traditional media that needs to remain is the ability to tell a compelling story. And a story that’s factual and accurate, too.
Marketing has expanded. Marketing people need to know about traditional marketing (such as 4Ps, Crossing the Chasm, branding, etc.) and know about network marketing and all the social media tools (Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, etc.). Marketing now is more real time and more interactive. Be nimble and be flexible and be consistent. No matter what create marketing processes so that marketing items can done as effectively as possible. Marketing people must be good writers, good readers and good listeners. Markers still must get along with all groups from engineering to sales and now to all customers directly. Great question deserves a long answer but this is all for now. Take care.
Marketing has expanded. Marketing people need to know about traditional marketing (such as 4Ps, Crossing the Chasm, branding, etc.) and know about network marketing and all the social media tools (Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, etc.). Marketing now is more real time and more interactive. Be nimble and be flexible and be consistent. No matter what create marketing processes so that marketing items can done as effectively as possible. Marketing people must be good writers, good readers and good listeners. Markers still must get along with all groups from engineering to sales and now to all customers directly. Great question deserves a long answer but this is all for now. Take care.
Hot buttons! Hot buttons! Hot buttons!
What elements of traditional marketing and communications will and should endure along side social media?
The ONLY class I remember, and vividly, from my undergrad work in marketing and market research is: Consumer Behavior. To be a great marketer, a great communicator, a great leader, you have to understand people. But consumer behavior is usually an elective, not a requirement.
The only enduring “marketing and communication” concepts are the enduring patterns of human behavior and human communication. Without a strong grounding in that, you’re just a publications department, producing shiny brochures that no one will read.
What’s obsolete about our teaching of marketing to date, and how do we evolve it?
I agree with Katie that the focus on tools is shortsighted. By the time most of these students graduate, the tools they were taught about in their first year are already out of date.
What I also suspect is obsolete (but can’t say definitively, as I’ve been away from school for 12 years now) is the misplaced emphasis on the company as the important player in the process. Consumers and what they think is supreme, but I think most students leave believing their ideas, not consumers’, are what is most important.
One other point: marketing is often treated like the red-headed stepchild of business schools (and even then is usually higher on the ladder than, gasp, organizational behavior–my grad school focus). But marketing–as social media has shown us so vividly–is as integral to business strategy as any operational function. Schools should be teaching “marketers” how to sit as an equal at the table with the rest of the C-suite…not to be the person six steps down the line asked to slap lipstick on a pig.
What should we be teaching marketers about social media, irrespective of the tools themselves?
Teach strategy, teach concepts, teach how to apply strategy and concepts to the tools at hand (whatever they may be), teach internal implementation, teach curiosity, teach creativity, teach consistency, teach skepticism, teach persuasion, teach passion, teach WRITING.
If you had new minds to shape about the landscape of communications in business as it will look five years from now, what would you want them to come away knowing, believing, and equipped to implement?
There is no difference between good communications and good business. They’re inseparable. If you want to be successful at one, you have to be successful at the other.
And success in either means having a thorough grounding as much in process as in people.
Hot buttons! Hot buttons! Hot buttons!
What elements of traditional marketing and communications will and should endure along side social media?
The ONLY class I remember, and vividly, from my undergrad work in marketing and market research is: Consumer Behavior. To be a great marketer, a great communicator, a great leader, you have to understand people. But consumer behavior is usually an elective, not a requirement.
The only enduring “marketing and communication” concepts are the enduring patterns of human behavior and human communication. Without a strong grounding in that, you’re just a publications department, producing shiny brochures that no one will read.
What’s obsolete about our teaching of marketing to date, and how do we evolve it?
I agree with Katie that the focus on tools is shortsighted. By the time most of these students graduate, the tools they were taught about in their first year are already out of date.
What I also suspect is obsolete (but can’t say definitively, as I’ve been away from school for 12 years now) is the misplaced emphasis on the company as the important player in the process. Consumers and what they think is supreme, but I think most students leave believing their ideas, not consumers’, are what is most important.
One other point: marketing is often treated like the red-headed stepchild of business schools (and even then is usually higher on the ladder than, gasp, organizational behavior–my grad school focus). But marketing–as social media has shown us so vividly–is as integral to business strategy as any operational function. Schools should be teaching “marketers” how to sit as an equal at the table with the rest of the C-suite…not to be the person six steps down the line asked to slap lipstick on a pig.
What should we be teaching marketers about social media, irrespective of the tools themselves?
Teach strategy, teach concepts, teach how to apply strategy and concepts to the tools at hand (whatever they may be), teach internal implementation, teach curiosity, teach creativity, teach consistency, teach skepticism, teach persuasion, teach passion, teach WRITING.
If you had new minds to shape about the landscape of communications in business as it will look five years from now, what would you want them to come away knowing, believing, and equipped to implement?
There is no difference between good communications and good business. They’re inseparable. If you want to be successful at one, you have to be successful at the other.
And success in either means having a thorough grounding as much in process as in people.
The irony is that marketing has always included focusing on the customer first. It’s companies that forgot about including them.
Back in the mid to late 90s, Integrated Marketing Communications and 1:1 Marketing were the ‘buzz’ of the day. The focus was on knowing and communicating with customers. Companies started using direct mail with business reply cards, but they used them for lead gen, not to collect data and learn from customers for the next outreach. Companies also panicked and started developing and/or installed CRM systems. [I built one in 1994 and here it is 15 years later and closed-loop CRM still hasn’t been figured out!] With both, companies spent a lot of time and money to collect and analyze data, but they really didn’t do much to actually speak to customers (other than sales). It was truly a lost opportunity.
I really think we need to step back and stop thinking that social media replaces ALL things marketing, PR and branding. Social media doesn’t replace ’em…it just allows customers to drive us back to the traditional roots that marketing has always provided.
There is a time and place for one-way push marketing…it’s not dead nor is it ineffective. There is also a time for two-way conversations. Effective marketing is knowing when to do which and when (or in combination)…not to give up one for the other. (And more, of course!)
As an adjunct marketing prof., I would tell Don to teach marketing principles, marketing strategy, marketing communications, planning and measurement, global marketing, integrated marketing & branding, consumer and business buying behavior, digital marketing, SEO, public relations…these fundamentals are still very valid and so few marketers truly understand them.
Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs
@bethharte
The irony is that marketing has always included focusing on the customer first. It’s companies that forgot about including them.
Back in the mid to late 90s, Integrated Marketing Communications and 1:1 Marketing were the ‘buzz’ of the day. The focus was on knowing and communicating with customers. Companies started using direct mail with business reply cards, but they used them for lead gen, not to collect data and learn from customers for the next outreach. Companies also panicked and started developing and/or installed CRM systems. [I built one in 1994 and here it is 15 years later and closed-loop CRM still hasn’t been figured out!] With both, companies spent a lot of time and money to collect and analyze data, but they really didn’t do much to actually speak to customers (other than sales). It was truly a lost opportunity.
I really think we need to step back and stop thinking that social media replaces ALL things marketing, PR and branding. Social media doesn’t replace ’em…it just allows customers to drive us back to the traditional roots that marketing has always provided.
There is a time and place for one-way push marketing…it’s not dead nor is it ineffective. There is also a time for two-way conversations. Effective marketing is knowing when to do which and when (or in combination)…not to give up one for the other. (And more, of course!)
As an adjunct marketing prof., I would tell Don to teach marketing principles, marketing strategy, marketing communications, planning and measurement, global marketing, integrated marketing & branding, consumer and business buying behavior, digital marketing, SEO, public relations…these fundamentals are still very valid and so few marketers truly understand them.
Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs
@bethharte
As a MENG member, market researcher, brand strategy consultant and marketing instructor, this is a relevant issue.
I am deeply involved in social media, but I very much echo Beth Harte’s comments above. The idea that social media should now crowd out the fundamentals of targeting, segmentation, competitive differentiation, brand strategy, consumer behavior and motivation, market research, product development, and pricing is ludicrous. Social media is a tactic, and it is changing the way that marketers and customers interact. But it isn’t changing the fundamentals of marketing. Social media is not an ‘earthquake’ or even a ‘groundswell’. It is part of a changing landscape of marketing communications that began with radio, and broadcast TV, progressed to cable and direct marketing and now has migrated to new forms of online communications.
I am finalizing my syllabi for Brand Strategy (MBA) and Principles of Marketing (undergrad) at U. of Notre Dame for next semester. I change my approach to these classes every year. I started teaching in the dark ages of 2003. Back then I needed to accomodate the advent of CRM, Blogs, Facebook, Myspace and Youtube. In 2004, teaching the BMW Films case was cutting edge, and there was a whole chapter on digital media. This year social media is the rage, but the trajectory won’t stop here.
Carol Phillips
Instructor, Marketing, University of Notre Dame
@carol_phillips
As a MENG member, market researcher, brand strategy consultant and marketing instructor, this is a relevant issue.
I am deeply involved in social media, but I very much echo Beth Harte’s comments above. The idea that social media should now crowd out the fundamentals of targeting, segmentation, competitive differentiation, brand strategy, consumer behavior and motivation, market research, product development, and pricing is ludicrous. Social media is a tactic, and it is changing the way that marketers and customers interact. But it isn’t changing the fundamentals of marketing. Social media is not an ‘earthquake’ or even a ‘groundswell’. It is part of a changing landscape of marketing communications that began with radio, and broadcast TV, progressed to cable and direct marketing and now has migrated to new forms of online communications.
I am finalizing my syllabi for Brand Strategy (MBA) and Principles of Marketing (undergrad) at U. of Notre Dame for next semester. I change my approach to these classes every year. I started teaching in the dark ages of 2003. Back then I needed to accomodate the advent of CRM, Blogs, Facebook, Myspace and Youtube. In 2004, teaching the BMW Films case was cutting edge, and there was a whole chapter on digital media. This year social media is the rage, but the trajectory won’t stop here.
Carol Phillips
Instructor, Marketing, University of Notre Dame
@carol_phillips
Forget students, can you please round up all the PR people and startups that cold pitch me so poorly through email? kthxbye =)
.-= Jason Keath´s last blog ..Why Do Conferences Suck? =-.
Forget students, can you please round up all the PR people and startups that cold pitch me so poorly through email? kthxbye =)
.-= Jason Keath´s last blog ..Why Do Conferences Suck? =-.
Amber, I have always thought that the smartest people are the ones who know what hard questions to ask. Once again in your post you have nailed some very important, very big questions concerning the future of marketing.
I totally agree with Beth Harte’s comments–so much so I wish I had written them. What Beth calls “fundamentals” I’ve been calling “fundamental dynamics,” but they’re one and the same. I am thoroughly convinced that the most important conversation for marketers to have right now is about fundamentals. “Everything” has definitely NOT been changed by social media. The things that have changed are *relatively* easy to see and understand. What’s not easy, but very important, are those fundamentals, because if you don’t know and can’t apply them, you’ll be less successful in BOTH worlds–new and “old.” Even more important is the fact that without grounding in the fundamentals, you can’t really judge what a new tool is useful for—and that skill is now absolutely essential.
In the past, marketing academics have done good work on some fundamentals, but it’s all badly in need of updating. I am trying to make it a focus of my blog to promote conversations and discovery around these principles, so that they may start to be codified. Given the pace of change, whatever is taught in the marketing courses of the future, it’s going to have to be refreshed a lot more frequently than once every decade or two (as it was when curriculum updating was chained to textbook production cycles).
To specifically address your questions, I would offer the following:
1. The most important thing that does not change from traditional to social is the urgent need to define clear objectives and strategies first, then create a plan to follow based on those and drive the tactics from the plan—not the reverse. In addition, as advances in social media marketing occur and a lot more marketing experiments are needed, all marketers—not just specialists—will need to call on the skill sets, expertise, rigorous adherence to test principles and math and science that are everyday routine for market researchers and direct marketers.
2. At a minimum the following ideas are (or soon will be) obsolete:
a) that there’s any benefit from operating sales and marketing as separate (or in some cases even “competing”) functional silos instead of as a single team responsible for each other’s success;
b) that there’s any benefit from operating marketing specialties as separate functional silos either. Even while marketing becomes more fragmented and specialized, with more complexity and more moving parts, the need to take an integrated approach is not diminished but greatly increased;
c) that simply by segmenting your target audience into six or eight personas or profiles you can achieve anything like the kind of mass personalization that customers want and expect. Relevance only exists in the mind of the customer and no marketer can divine relevance for them from thin air. You have to ask the individual, or somehow get hard research data that comes from the individual, or else all your assumptions are nothing but fiction.
d) that measuring your results by any metric other than business outcomes is acceptable.
3. With the emphasis on business outcomes will come the desire for predictable and reliable business results. Social media is about inventing new ways for people to connect, and it’s extremely agile. Both very good and very bad results can occur very quickly. But it’s not the speed nor going viral that’s going to be especially important in the future. Fast stunts and long tail activities both have their places and advantages. The novelty of one-time stunts will soon fade as businesses look for best practices that are sustainable, that can generate the same or similar results when repeated. The social media marketer will have to acquire skill and experience in all facets of best practices, and the scope of that will far exceed the limited set of popular tactics of today, which will soon seem positively archaic.
4. Compared to five years from now, we haven’t even begun to tap the potential of social media to help transform selling into a rich set of services, information and connections that truly make it easier for people to buy. Current work in this area is mere tinkering. Today’s college students are the ones who will really get to implement some truly great new ways of fulfilling this important potential of social media. We pay lipservice to the idea that the consumer is now “in control,” but we haven’t really given them very good tools for managing their own buying processes.
.-= Steve Parker´s last blog ..Fresh from the content pastures =-.
Amber, I have always thought that the smartest people are the ones who know what hard questions to ask. Once again in your post you have nailed some very important, very big questions concerning the future of marketing.
I totally agree with Beth Harte’s comments–so much so I wish I had written them. What Beth calls “fundamentals” I’ve been calling “fundamental dynamics,” but they’re one and the same. I am thoroughly convinced that the most important conversation for marketers to have right now is about fundamentals. “Everything” has definitely NOT been changed by social media. The things that have changed are *relatively* easy to see and understand. What’s not easy, but very important, are those fundamentals, because if you don’t know and can’t apply them, you’ll be less successful in BOTH worlds–new and “old.” Even more important is the fact that without grounding in the fundamentals, you can’t really judge what a new tool is useful for—and that skill is now absolutely essential.
In the past, marketing academics have done good work on some fundamentals, but it’s all badly in need of updating. I am trying to make it a focus of my blog to promote conversations and discovery around these principles, so that they may start to be codified. Given the pace of change, whatever is taught in the marketing courses of the future, it’s going to have to be refreshed a lot more frequently than once every decade or two (as it was when curriculum updating was chained to textbook production cycles).
To specifically address your questions, I would offer the following:
1. The most important thing that does not change from traditional to social is the urgent need to define clear objectives and strategies first, then create a plan to follow based on those and drive the tactics from the plan—not the reverse. In addition, as advances in social media marketing occur and a lot more marketing experiments are needed, all marketers—not just specialists—will need to call on the skill sets, expertise, rigorous adherence to test principles and math and science that are everyday routine for market researchers and direct marketers.
2. At a minimum the following ideas are (or soon will be) obsolete:
a) that there’s any benefit from operating sales and marketing as separate (or in some cases even “competing”) functional silos instead of as a single team responsible for each other’s success;
b) that there’s any benefit from operating marketing specialties as separate functional silos either. Even while marketing becomes more fragmented and specialized, with more complexity and more moving parts, the need to take an integrated approach is not diminished but greatly increased;
c) that simply by segmenting your target audience into six or eight personas or profiles you can achieve anything like the kind of mass personalization that customers want and expect. Relevance only exists in the mind of the customer and no marketer can divine relevance for them from thin air. You have to ask the individual, or somehow get hard research data that comes from the individual, or else all your assumptions are nothing but fiction.
d) that measuring your results by any metric other than business outcomes is acceptable.
3. With the emphasis on business outcomes will come the desire for predictable and reliable business results. Social media is about inventing new ways for people to connect, and it’s extremely agile. Both very good and very bad results can occur very quickly. But it’s not the speed nor going viral that’s going to be especially important in the future. Fast stunts and long tail activities both have their places and advantages. The novelty of one-time stunts will soon fade as businesses look for best practices that are sustainable, that can generate the same or similar results when repeated. The social media marketer will have to acquire skill and experience in all facets of best practices, and the scope of that will far exceed the limited set of popular tactics of today, which will soon seem positively archaic.
4. Compared to five years from now, we haven’t even begun to tap the potential of social media to help transform selling into a rich set of services, information and connections that truly make it easier for people to buy. Current work in this area is mere tinkering. Today’s college students are the ones who will really get to implement some truly great new ways of fulfilling this important potential of social media. We pay lipservice to the idea that the consumer is now “in control,” but we haven’t really given them very good tools for managing their own buying processes.
.-= Steve Parker´s last blog ..Fresh from the content pastures =-.