The Game Has Changed. Is Your Marketing Changing With It?
Summary:
Business Is More Competitive Than Ever
Customers Are Spending More Time With Social Media
64% Of Best In Class Companies Plan To Spend More On Social Media Marketing In 2009 Than In 2008
To Compete, Businesses Must Take A Fresh Look At Their Marketing Strategies And Channels
Today I was in the small town where I grew up. I come here about once every 6 weeks or so. For some reason, the only place I wanted to visit today was the city park where all the baseball fields are located.
I first stopped at the park on the hill. That’s where it all started. Farm League. I played on that diamond from ages 6 until about age 10. It seemed so big back then. Today, it just seemed like a small yard.
Down the hill from that is the town’s Little League diamond. That’s where I played until age 13. It’s a bigger park of course.
And then right across from that is the big park. The Pony League and Colt League field. That’s where I played until I retired from baseball at the ripe old age of 16.
As I thought about the three parks being so close together, what amazed me was the differences in the level of play from one field to the next. The level of competition kept getting tougher and tougher each year.
As boys, we were all getting more skilled at the game. We were developing our hand-eye coordination as well as our abilities to focus on the game. We were getting stronger each year.
By Pony League and Colt League, we were starting to develop our muscles and strength, so we were hitting balls 3 times the distance that we could hit them in Farm League. And the pitches were coming at us about 3 to 6 times faster, I’d guess.
So the bats we swung were bigger and heavier. Even the basic design in some of the aluminum bats was changing.
Business: It’s A Whole New Ball Game
Those 3 baseball fields remind me of business and marketing. It’s more competitive now than ever. The competition is getting stronger. And the speed at which things happen is faster than ever.
And just like it would have been naive for me to have used the same equipment in Colt League or to have relied on the same basic strategies that I had relied on in Farm League, I think it’s just as naive for businesses today to simply rely on the same marketing tools and strategies that they’ve relied on in the past. Sooner or later, you have to roll out some new equipment and strategies.
The world is changing. That world includes the people who are your customers and your competitors.
Your customers and your competition are relying more and more on different types of media than they were even 2 years ago. In particular, they’re spending more time with social media.
According to a recent study titled, “The ROI On Social Media Marketing” by The Aberdeen Group, 63% of best-in-class companies plan to increase their spending on social media marketing in 2009. Those are businesses that realize the game is changing.
Twitter for example was just launched in the spring of 2007. Today, it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Businesses are starting to realize the importance of Twitter as a marketing channel. With a 600% growth rate in 2008, Twitter now has around 4M-5M users, 70% of whom joined in 2008. And an estimated 5-10 thousand new Twitter accounts are opened per day
Facebook just added its 200th million user. Mind you, Facebook has been around only since it began as a college project back in 2003. And the world is gaining Internet access at a fast pace, as well, a 342 percent increase from 2000-2008, as over 1.6 billion people now have Internet access.
Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone on Facebook or Twitter is in their twenties or younger. 45% of Facebookâs US audience is now 26 years old or older. You’ll now find everyone from engineers to doctors on both of these social networks.
What are people doing on these networks? They’re having conversations related to brands, business and much more. As you may have seen, they’re having a lot of trivial conversations. But they’re also having a lot of meaningful conversations. They’re sharing ideas and information. They’re asking others for product and service recommendations.
Businesses that want to compete realize that when the game changes, they have to change with it. That doesn’t mean waiting for the economy to get to a point where the same old strategies and marketing channels will work like they used to. But rather, going where the conversations are taking place, listening, engaging and connecting. Now.
It’s a whole new game. The question is, are you willing to step up to the plate and think differently about your marketing?
-Kevin McIntosh
Kevin McIntosh has 20 years experience in marketing and branding. He has worked on the marketing campaigns of over a hundred brands including over a dozen Fortune 500 brands. He shows businesses how to differentiate from their competition through a combination of traditional and new media channels.
Tags: social media
