We all know that there are far too many people out there who call themselves marketers who only know how to tweet or post to Facebook or Instagram.
But recently I had a conversation with several people who claim to be high-powered, senior level marketing executives who didn’t have a clue about what a digital marketing plan would entail. I had to define digital, plan, and implementation tactics for them.
Let me be honest: People who don’t understand that customers do not exist solely on the Internet, and more particularly on social media, infuriate me. But “marketers” who don’t understand how the digital world has infiltrated our lives, our consciousness, and the way we live and buy frighten me.
Effective marketing is a product of its time. It is a subtle and sophisticated integration of your organization’s/product’s/service’s value with your audience’s needs and wants. And it communicates this integration simply, clearly, and with the nuances demanded by the variety of mechanisms by which you get this message out.
The best marketing has an elegant simplicity to it. But it is never simplistic.
Too often, marketers chase the latest fad or fashion and tout it as the apotheosis of all marketing can and will ever be. But it is an equally egregious error to remain fixed in the past and ignore (beyond lip service) trends that are clearly significant and here to stay.
You cannot be an effective marketer if you assume the world beyond social media is irrelevant. You cannot be an effective marketer if your marketing attempts to ignore the changes wrought on society and the marketplace by the digital revolution.
More and more, I find myself wondering where the real marketing professionals have gone: The ones who understand the complexities, and changing complexities, of society and the marketplace – and rejoice in them as a challenge to creativity.
