14 Statements that Raise Expert Direct Marketers' Blood Pressure
Friday, May 29, 2009 at 03:19PM Some readers will take issue with my list arguing that it contains
elements of truth. But in my view, these comments generally reflect a
misdirected strategic sense or preconceived ideas about the role of
advertising and direct marketing that are based on poorly founded
assumptions. At their best, some of these statements reflect ignorance and
at their worst, closed mindedness. But you be the judge. Perhaps you could
add to this list or elaborate on those listed.
1. Any marketing experience you have that is over 10 years old is
useless.
2. Any strategy that has an ROI attached to it is no longer a strategy,
but a tactic.
3. Direct marketing operates below the line because it supports
awareness advertising.
4. We tried direct mail (or any other medium named that was used a
couple of times) and it doesn't work.
5. Traditional media is dead because every one now uses and buys
products exclusively as a result of the overwhelming influence of the
Internet.
6. We want a CMO with hands on expertise in online technology, not
someone who has just led such programs.
7. Don't worry about the strategy. Just do it.
8. When we are spending on advertising to build the brand, we don't
worry about trying to calculate ROI because nothing is more important
than our brand.
9. We know that successful BtoB lead generation used to rely heavily on
traditional media like outbound telemarketing. But today, business people
use the Internet. So we have to dump the old, proven approaches for pure,
Internet lead generation.
10. We don't want to put a coupon in our print advertisements because
the design does not fit our brand image.
11. We don't want to make an offer or other call to action because that
gets in the way of our image.
12. That direct mail package is ugly and doesn't retain the look and
feel of all of our advertising.
13. We can handle any volume of leads you generate. So don't worry about
limiting weekly lead flow volumes.
14. We want only tight leads where the prospect is ready to buy today.
Otherwise we just waste our sales people's time.
What other statements tend to get you going?
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Reader Comments (6)
Ted, don't limit these to just direct marketers - I consider myself a marketer in the broader sense and damn near every one of those statements got the blood boiling!
My humble opinion - but anyone claiming to be in marketing that utters "Don't worry about strategy. Just do it." is an ass, a lousy businessperson and dangerous because their idiocy will most likely put a lot of other hard working people out of a job.
And here's one I just love - "Let's lower the CPI and increase the inquiry volume in order to keep our salesforce busy." (I love this because no one stops to think that targeted marketing means hitting your goals with X staff, but shotgun marketing means you need a staff of X+Y so the business spends more on hiring./training/employing staff than what they save on lowering the CPI.)
Great post!
First off, I agree w/ Pat -- this isn't just for direct marketers. Here's one I saw today (in my Twitter stream). Well-known marketing blogger said "You're not just marketing products, you're marketing conversations."
Yeah, right.
YOU walk into the CEO and CFO's office and say "sales are down 43%, but we had 1 million conversations this week."
Just don't let the door hit your sorry little ass on your way out.
I really believe that point number 8 would cause some brand marketers real problems.
As for your tweet about "marketing conversations" Ron, this is a classic case of mixing up strategies with objectives. If the conversations and the image budgets do not yield incremental revenue, then the objectives are not met. You nailed this one.
Some take issue with me on this point, but we really need to evaluate market efforts and budgets based on ROI or our reason for being as marketers will disappear.
Let me try to take this one step further, Ted. I think many CEOs/CFOs do want to use ROI as the evaluation criteria. Problem is, in many industries, what marketing does is help fill the top of the funnel (if you still buy into that concept -- I had a conversation w/ a CMO from a very large financial services company who disputed that), while ROI is realized towards the bottom of the funnel. A lot is going on IN the funnel. Some industries call is "sales".
As best as I can tell, in a lot of firms in a lot of industries, marketing wants to be evaluated on a subset of measures.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sara
http://smallbusinessgrant.info
Thank you Sara.
It's always nice to hear from interested readers.
Please feel free to ask any question, make a comment or state an opinion. That's what this blog is about -- learning from each other.