Where Won’t Marketers Go?

Aug 7, 2017

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in Advertising, Marketing, Marketing automation

Warning: this content is older than 365 days. It may be out of date and no longer relevant.

Oz du Soleil responded to the most recent blog post on auto-DMs with this observation:

“I remember a few years ago online marketers were all about the importance of building relationships. Today, it’s about taking advantage of technologies that allow marketers to be invasive. Email is a miserable place because marketers made it so. Now, marketers are invading Messenger and sending DMs. Is there any place a marketer won’t go? Will some marketer find a way to legally come into our homes, unannounced, with a spiel about accordion lessons?”

The short answer is that marketers won’t go where the people aren’t. The longer answer is to think in terms of business.

What do businesses generally want?

More profits
Fewer expenses

In other words, efficiency.

Granted, that’s an oversimplification to some degree, but for the most part, businesses – especially businesses seeking to reach broad, large audiences – look for efficiency. They demand efficiency of their marketers and marketing efforts.

Social networks and their APIs and ad systems have made reaching people on those networks very efficient. Because these media channels are no different than broadcast networks, they require eyeballs – ours – to sell to advertisers as their primary business model. Thus, marketers go to these places to achieve reach efficiently. (whether reach is the appropriate metric is a separate discussion)

The good news for marketers – and the bad news for consumers – is that the mobile revolution has transformed just about every urban place and a fair number of rural places into scalable, reachable locations. Marketers may not be able to show up at someone’s home in person, but they sure can show up in every home on mobile phones (with sufficient budget).

Why didn’t online marketing focused on relationship building really accelerate, given the ease with which we can connect with each other day? The same answer: efficiency. Relationship building is inefficient. Invasive advertising at scale is efficient – especially when the cost of digital reach continues to drop.

As much as we talk about nurturing relationships and making authentic connections, the financial engines of business are fueled by revenue and finely tuned to be efficient. Activities which are efficient are rewarded by stock markets, investors, and company leadership, for good or ill.

Now, these statements about efficiency are broadly true, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions. Especially in B2B marketing, where we might have a very small pool of highly-qualified, high value prospects (Fortune 50 CMOs, for example), relationship building might be the only way to reach a small, valuable audience. For the most part, however, if a business relies on scale for growth and revenue, it will market accordingly with a focus on efficiency above all else.

Thus, where won’t marketers go?

Places where marketing is inefficient
Places where ROI is negative
Places where marketing doesn’t work at scale

Understanding that inefficiency and negative ROI are anathema to most marketers, where should consumers who want to avoid marketers spend their time?

Messaging networks that are privately held and run
Privately run social networks
Any highly inefficient communications medium (such as in-person meetings)
Any communications medium without advertising

In short, if a communications network requires payment or significant investment and shows no ads, that’s a place marketers can’t find you. For example, if you start a private Slack group and you pay for the premium membership, the chances of a marketer invading that space are nearly zero.

We return to the most basic axiom of media:

If you’re not paying, you’re the product.

Flip to the corollary:

Marketers can’t market to you if you’re paying to avoid them.

That’s where marketers won’t go.

Comments

3 responses to “Where Won’t Marketers Go?”

Charles H. Green

August 7, 2017

Yes, but….

While it’s theoretically true in the long run that firms are most interested in efficiency, in the real world, most firms mis-define it – and increasingly so.

They mis-define efficiency by focusing on too short a time frame, and on too narrow a definition. What you end up with when you do that is things like scorched earth spammish programs, pissed-off contacts, and foregone opportunities.

Marketers have only to look at the horrible misuse of “efficiency” as a guiding concept in the customer service field. The business world is littered with service reps who are ignorant, un-empowered, and saddled with scripts, then burdened with the insistence on suborning the customer’s ‘rating’ so that their performance can be ‘measured.’

What this definition of ‘efficiency’ does is focus on how many calls per hour can be answered; the denominator in the equation is implicitly a very short time-frame (an hour, a day) and a frequency metric; how many calls you can “answer.”

An enlightened company knows that truly solving a customer problem is worth 5X merely answering questions. A complaint resolved results in greater customer loyalty than mere satisfadtion in the first place.

This lesson needs to be learned by online marketers. I am aghast at how many ignorant, spam-influenced, zero-content emails I get telling me that my business can clearly benefit from their product or service.

The narrow efficiency issue is the one you point out: focusing on privately run networks or scaled down audiences. But the real efficiency issue is the insistence on continuing to use stupid, canned, automated messaging. If I’m a widget firm, it’s not all that much better to receive canned pitches aimed at widgets than it is to receive the same pitches if I’m a non-widget producer – it’s still canned spam!

One suggestion: allocate 10% of marketing budgets to the sales department: tell them to stay on the line just 2 minutes longer before “flushing” a lead that’s close but unqualified. Take the time to make a real connection, give someone who showed up in your list a bit of free consulting – make a REAL impression on a REAL business that has real people who talk to other real people in related businesses.

Reply
1. Oz
  
  August 7, 2017
  
  @cgreen23:disqus I agree with what you describe as the perversity of just looking at ROI and efficiency. You’re right that customer service is miserable because it’s stats-driven.
  
  I like Chris’ response because it lays it out there plain: ROI and efficiency. Awful experience for consumers.
  
  This reminds me of the days leading up to the National Do Not Call List. Consumers were pissed. Folks were tired of getting calls during dinner, while they were in the shower, or expecting an important call … and it’d be a telemarketer with something that just felt like agitation.
  
  With Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, DMs … I wonder if consumers can unite in such a way to effectively demand STOP! PLEASE!
  
  Reply
Oz

August 7, 2017

Chris, this is why I appreciate you.
I hate your answer, but it’s honest and sober. Thanks for taking my concerns seriously. Other marketers have responded who they’re among the good ones, and agree that some marketers are slimy. But that doesn’t address the reality for overwhelmed consumers. Overwhelm is overwhelm.

But I can get your answer. ‘Efficiency.’ Simple. That’s easy to understand.

This makes for tough choices. I deactivated my Facebook account almost 2 weeks ago partly because the marketers have taken over. Ok … now I’m no longer connected to over 2000 people and some significant private groups, but I have some peace and I’ve been way more productive.

I wonder what I’d be willing to pay if Facebook offered and ad-free option.

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Where Won’t Marketers Go?

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3 responses to “Where Won’t Marketers Go?”

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