How To Identify the Modern Marketer
Okay, you’re an advertising professional, client side or agency side, on a conference call with people you haven’t met. You want to talk strategy, you want to talk creative, you want to talk budget. But you don’t know if the people you are talking to get it. You don’t know if they understand marketing for a social world.
How can you find out if they are a modern marketer – an “MM” – without being impolite?
It’s simple really. People who get marketing for a social world ask 3 questions that people stuck in a traditional, one-way world rarely bother to ask or barely understand.
- Who do our prospects trust to tell them about new products and services?
- How can our colleagues and customers amplify our marketing investment?
- What is the conversation telling us to change about ourselves right now?
Let’s tick through them so you too can identify the modern marketer.
MM Question 1: Who do our prospects trust to tell them about new products and services?
Traditional marketers don’t typically ask this question. They “know” people trust a well-tended brand. They trust a well-designed ad. They trust a well-informed salesperson.
MMs know people now really trust only two sources: themselves and their social networks – phone circles, Facebook friends, fellow Amazon buyers or Google results. The Internet has made us the expert. In everything. Really. We are no longer dependent on a constricted advertising stream managed by the marketer. We are no longer “funnelable” by a sales process. We may mourn the general loss of authority – doctors, pundits and bank vice presidents have all suffered in our eyes – but few of us would willingly return to a day when we couldn’t search topics, read reviews or ask our friends – online and off – what they thought about the stuff they bought.
MMs still spread their messages through traditional channels when that makes sense. But they are also constantly on the hunt for ways to improve their search ranking and connect through social.
MM Question 2: How can our colleagues and customers amplify our marketing investment?
This question is a dead giveaway. Traditional marketers might run the occasional member-get-member promotion or ask a satisfied customer to “tell a friend” about their product or service. But they don’t really stretch their imaginations much.
MMs integrate the customer directly into the content development and marketing outreach process.
MMs ask of every strategy, of every promotion, of every widget and clickable button, “how can we get more user generated content,” and “how can we get users to share our messages with their social connections?”
MM Question 3: What is the conversation telling us to change about ourselves right now?
This final question makes no sense at all to traditional marketers. Data simply does not flow in real-time through traditional channels. The best that can be done are after-the-fact surveys and post-buy analyses.
MMs always incorporate real-time intelligence gathering opportunities into their marketing strategies – commenting opportunities, tweet requests, votes, polls, social hubs with measurable traffic. It’s funny how often a traditional marketer, unsure perhaps about the new world of social engagement, will ask about metrics relative to this or that social marketing opportunity, seeking some proof of ROI. It’s funny because social engagements, even though they are often brand-focused, not sales-focused, are so much more measurable than traditional advertising forms.
A well-constructed marketing strategy, with a good mix of traditional outbound and social engagement opportunities, combined with intelligently designed promotions, provides a constant stream of relevant information – information that can be put to use immediately, not only by the marketer, but also by strategists across the organizations they serve – business development, product development and beyond.
Now you know
Next time you are talking marketing, listen for these three questions. Or ask them yourself. If the response signals “MM,” you’re in good company. If not, we know a good company to call.
