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Marketing

Future Marketing: More Time Cost; Less Advert Cost

by Andrew Swenson

In a recent interview, Bob Hutchins and Greg Stielstra claim that demographics no longer rule the marketing roost, ideology does:

…there are no Facebook groups for traditional segments like women 25-54 or households making $75k+/yr. Instead, people define themselves according to their interests [...] which is why there are Facebook groups for Scrapbooking, Yoga, and fans of the Green Bay Packers.

All of this is exciting and scary to me as a marketer. It’s easy identify 25-54 women living in households that made $75k+/yr. It’s hard to know who’s an avid scapbooker.

As affinity groups gain importance (and attention from marketers), there’s no doubt that permission marketing will conquer (thanks Seth Godin).

In other words, we have to start thinking about how to find a permissions base, how to grow it, and how to maintain it. The  days of “blast an email to all the 25-54 year old women to see if we can find some scrapbookers” are numbered.

Of course, permission marketing is hard. Finding a permission base and engaging them enough to buy whatever you’re selling is tough. But it’s not impossible. The internet has given us the ability to view behavioral trends and gain access to groups that we never could before.

I think permission marketing will force us to shift where we spend our marketing dollars.

Instead of shelling out big bucks for ads, we’ll invest in tools that allow us to listen more efficiently (like Radian6—full disclosure, this is a completely unsolicited plug). We’ll also spend more time producing relevant content to add value to the online community.

This is a vision of the future that places more responsibility on businesses to concentrate on their customers first so that profits will follow. It means that all of us will be responsible for creating and maintaining relationships with our customers. It means that we’ll spend more in time and less in materials.

So what do you think of this vision? Let me know.

-Andrew

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  • http://www.radian6.com Amber Naslund

    Hi Andrew,

    Thanks for the unsolicited plug. :)

    I’m with you that it’s more about time than materials these days. One of the reasons demographics don’t work as well is because we – as humans and customers – don’t put ourselves in demographic buckets. We don’t segment ourselves by our income and our ages. We gather around our interests, so if you want to communicate with me, you need to identify with me the way I identify with myself.

    cheers,
    Amber Naslund
    Director of Community, Radian6
    @ambercadabra

  • http://www.google.com Kelly Brown

    Hi, very nice post. I have been wonder’n bout this issue,so thanks for posting

  • http://twitter.com/mellis82 Matt Ellis

    Spot on!

    I’m working with an NPO that is quickly learning that its traditional go-to campaigns are quickly slipping. It’s no longer about casting the cause marketing net wide , but now about finding a very targeted campaign/program/event that fits the very targeted affinity group!

    It’ almost seems somewhat common sense when you think about it (one of those hit yourself in the head “shoulda had a V8″ moments)! But the blanket demo marketing has been WAY easier for SO many years. Interested in seeing how this drives up advertising creativity!

    Great insight! Thanks for posting!