Are you selling what you have to sell or what your customers want to buy?
I finally picked up Seth Godin’s book “Meatball Sundae
Old Marketing (mass marketing) is dying or at least shrinking in relevance and New Marketing (permission based marketing) is the future.
The good news for business, small businesses in particular, is that new marketing is much more cost effective and has an exponentially higher response rate. One example Seth uses in the book is a comparison of response rates for direct mail versus permission based (opt in) email marketing. The typical direct mail campaign costs $1 per recipient and has an expected response rate of one percent. Compare this to a permission based email campaign where the recipients have asked to receive information about your products and services. The cost of crafting the email is most likely the same as the cost of designing the mailer in the direct mail scenario but there is virtually no cost of distribution. Sending an email to one person or one hundred thousand costs the same. Here’s the rub, according to Seth the response rate for email is often 20 to 30 times higher than snail mail.
The cost component in the above scenario, while significant, is not the point. The point is the response rate and what it means to your marketing strategy. In today’s world, people can choose to not be interrupted. Think about it:
- Radio - People have iPhones, podcasts of radio broadcasts and XM satellite radio.
- TV - TiVo, iTunes and other on-demand delivery systems make sitting through ads unnecessary.
- Telemarketing - The “do not call list” makes dinner interruptions a thing of the past.
- Spam - Unwanted email marketing (no permission given) is swept up via spam filters.
New Marketing, as Seth suggests, eschews yelling in the faces of people who would rather not hear what you have to say in favor of engaging people who have a problem you can solve. It’s the old “fish where the fish are” axiom taken to the next level.
Fish where the fish are but be sure to have the bait the fish like to eat.
My father and I took my son Jackson fishing for the first time recently. The first stop we made was the local bait shop where I asked the guy behind the counter for the best place to catch trout. Then we bought our worms and headed to the pond he suggested. We knew where the fish were.
When we got to the pond, set up and baited our hooks with several options. In addition to the worms we had brought other options such as PowerBait and salmon eggs. Sure enough the fish started biting but only the hooks baited with worms. Nothing else was drawing even the slightest nibble. But we had all that other bait. What to do?
We could have developed an aggressive marketing strategy to push the PowerBait as an attractive alternative to worms. And salmon eggs are so European and chic, they are like caviare. I mean come on, we had all that inventory. Certainly if we yelled loud enough the fish would try our other products.
But wait, there was a guy with his son fishing right near us and they were using worms. Just what the fish wanted. Hmm…maybe we should position ourselves as the best place for trout to fill their worm needs.
And this is the most important part of the “Meatball Sundae” message. New Marketing, is not about selling what you have or what you want sell to people through new marketing tools. It is about identifying what people want to buy, finding out where these people are and structuring your marketing and business strategy to maximize the engagement of these customers.
So, have you read “Meatball Sundae”? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Tags: new marketing, Next Level, small business, Social media