Are You Designing Your Marketing Backwards?

The hot new thing in marketing what you have to offer is social media.  Social media means relationship-based, viral ways of communicating  – like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter.  Social media is “new” marketing, while industrial media (print, broadcast, and traditional filmmaking) is said to be “old.”  The other big difference between marketing with social media as opposed to marketing with industrial media is cost.  You can, for instance, send your clients and prospects an electronic newsletter for very little cost OR you can spend a great deal of money paying for a newspaper ad every week.

While it is great to have many new ways to market, designing marketing that works is the even bigger key.  It’s a mistake to get enthralled with a certain way to deliver your marketing FIRST and make your marketing fit that delivery system.  Why?  Well, you’re not focused on your people.  Marketing that works focuses FIRST on your peeps.  You have to think from their point of view  first and foremost.

Two social media marketing folks, Julie Ask and Charles Golvin, came up with a systematic approach to mobile marketing strategy that they called POST.  But the truth is, POST applies to any type of marketing strategy, no matter whether it is old or new.  Here’s the simple system:

• People (P)
• Objectives (O)
• Strategy (S)
• Technology (T)

Ask and Golvin remind us that we have to know who are people are, what our objectives are (what do we want them to know about what we have to offer), the strategies we might use (information, special offers, etc.) and only THEN pick the technology.  If you’re trying to reach 75 year old guys, chances are they WON’T be reached effectively through social media.  On the other hand, to market to a 25 year old guy you might want to use mobile technology.

Be enthusiastic about how you deliver your marketing only after you are enthusiastic about describing your market inside out and backwards and forwards.  The more you know about your peeps, the better you’ll have a sense of what will serve them.  The rest of your marketing will fall into place and be successful.  Make sure you’re design forward, not backward.  Your bank account will show the results!

(c) Sue Painter