Canadian Marketing Blog

Traditional Marketing is Dead

In the early nineties there was a notion that the internet would alter the face of Direct Marketing. Unless you live in a cave, it has! But it is not just the Internet that has changed the way we market products or services, technology has also had a dramatic impact on how we conduct and market our businesses.

In fact, it is my position that technology has surpassed the marketer. There is a new breed of marketer that is emerging from our schools and universities. They understand the power of the web and know how to use it well. But in the world of clicks, unique clicks, soft bounces, downloads, hard bounces, followers, blogs and viewers, two basic fundamentals of marketing are slowly disappearing: accountability and measurability.

Unless the goal of an online marketing campaign is to raise awareness, business owners are solely interested in ROMI. Unfortunately, tracking mechanisms are often excluded from the Call to Action (sometimes there is no CTA) on many new initiatives and metrics such as those listed above do not demonstrate success (at least in a monetary fashion).

So what do we do?

Vish Ramkissoon, Partner FSA Datalytic, is a member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council.

So is what you are saying that marketing programs are teaching skills (how to program a web page) but not fundamentals (why measuring click throughs might not be enough to ensure accountability)? That it is not about pretty flash, but measurable ROI?

You say that "technology has surpassed the marketer, but isn't it true that by better using technology ROMI could be better calculated?

Strongly disagree on both counts:
Yes, technology has advanced, but yes, so too have marketers!
Today a whole new breed of marketing professional is learning to use these tools to significantly boost ROMI across the board, but also to measure it more accurately because each campaign can be tied to an actual sales dollar value realized from the opportunity.
In other words, the tools allow complete tracking and accountability, and they provide the answers with far less effort than was required before.
For more on these topics and how they work, please check out our website at www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca

Excellent commentary but I would add that the difference today is access to data and the ability to apply sound mathematcical disciplines in order to get at the true insights or intelligence from all this data. This means that that the so-called 'math geeks' or nerds who were often 'behind the scenes' will play a more significant role in the world of marketing analytics.

I disagree too. Technology has advanced but the fundamentals are the same. It's still about moving people from awareness to action. It's still about engaging with people. It's still about brand association. The primary difference is that all of the really interesting marketing is happening within the 'funnel'..in the past it all happened at the entrance (mass media). And, we have to get use to the fact that the conversation is happening about us..not necessarily 'with us'.

The activity in the middle can be measured and ROMI is still key. Check out 'linking elephants' from Adaptive Path.

http://www.peterme.com/archives/000642.html

But are marketers using technology at the expense of marketing basics? Not having a call to action, regardless of the number of click throughs, is a problem for those of us who have been around long enough to care about the basics!

Vish,
it's an interesting post, but I respectfully disagree that technology is causing worse marketing measurement and accountability. Definitely, bad marketing is bad marketing, regardless of how it's done, but technology does not make this any more likely. On the flip side, technology does enable an entirely new way of tracking, measuring, and accounting for marketing efforts.

I wrote a piece about B2B marketing dashboards - http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-dashboards.html that showcases how technology does make marketing more trackable all the way from individual tactics and calls to action, up to detailed funnel analytics and ROMI reporting.

Interested in your thoughts on that.

Long live traditional marketing!

If traditional marketing is dead, why do I still see ads on tv, in print, outdoors... and get my weekly pile of recyclables?

The channels have expanded.

There is an progressive shift to online advertising, where you can track everything much better to measure roi, but saying traditional marketing is simply wrong, as well as the statement that accountability and measurability are disappearing.

You went from traditional marketing is dead to online marketing without anything to back up your claims...