Traditional Marketing is a Dodo

As a result of the new ways we have to communicate through the Internet and email, traditional marketing methods and approaches are dead. Your Marketing Department NEEDS to change in shape and strategy if your company wants to be around tomorrow. Marketing is all about communication and the way you deliver your sales message and identity and that is all about the Internet and email. It is no longer about marketing collateral or traditional PR or a "department" in your organisation that has little or no strategic alignment with corporate mission or sales strategies. Marketing is now about creating sales opportunity for your sales people by directly putting them in front of your target market and target customer with the right value proposition and support. Sales cannot cold call any longer, it is now unacceptable. They shouldn't canvass or telephone blitz, it is unprofessional. They now rely on marketing campaigns that directly generate qualified leads and appointments so they can use their presentation, propositioning and negotiation skills to close business. Marketing alignment as a cross function of sales approaches and sales strategy combined with technology and new ways of thinking are crucial to future business success. So if you have a traditional marketing department, doing the stuff they did 5-10 years ago, you need to change and change quickly before you realise your business has lost its competitive edge and most of its customers to new companies with who understand 21st. Century marketing methods and technology based strategies. - Bob

Comments

[Mark McCormack]

I couldn't agree more with your comments. Every day I see companies trying to use old cold calling or canvassing methods that were fine for ten years ago. They cannot understand why their response rates and conversion rates are dropping. Instead of improving their processes, they need to recognise that people are behaving differently than they have done in the past. For this reason they need to move to new methods of communication or be left behind.