3 Legacy Marketing Tactics You Need to Stop Right Now

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The Atkins Diet, Flare Jeans and Myspace – all part of the awkwardness that was the year 2000; an uncertain time when we didn’t understand exactly why Savage Garden was top of the charts, but inside we all secretly did.

When we turn our attention to something more serious – it is easy to see just how marketing has changed since the turn of the century. Alarmingly however, it seems a few things have lingered which should have been moved to the Recycle Bin a long time ago.

Email Newsletters

Email newsletters were all the early rage in the early 2000s. Even still, when I was consulting in 2008 I still recall being able to charge clients a couple of thousand dollars to set up a basic subscription page with a newsletter template on the back end.

Although brands like to communicate on mass to their clients a few things have severely impacted the effectiveness of email newsletters in generating brand awareness and further sales.

The first is that the penetration rate of email continues to dwindle – with instant communication platforms like Slack, chat services like WhatsApp and social media proliferation lead by Snapchat and Facebook the push notifications served to mobile devices are continually growing in influence over email as preferred channel, especially for millennials. An interesting infographic provided by Mobify – explores the notion that emails are preferable for communications which have reduced urgency, but the fact that this is being acknowledged at an industry level is alarming for email firms. If we accept this notion to be true; the fact that consumers know that emails are a place for low-priority communications means that their impact will continue to decline as they are de-prioritised in the minds of consumers.

In an article sponsored by Nexmo – SMS is still shown as the most effective method of delivering a message with a 90% read rate in the first three minutes.

The second and the most important reason why email newsletters no longer work well is that put simply; nobody cares. A generalization you might ask, but with buyers having such reducing attention spans, sifting through countless hordes of email communications – if your message is not specific to the individual and to the account (in the case of a B2B newsletter) then don’t bother sending it. Irrelevant communication is worse than no communication – instead many of the most successful firms are abandoning newsletters with highly tailored, personalized monthly messages from an account rep or individual – something people like to drop into the bucket of account based marketing. The problem is that although companies like to claim they are executing an ABM strategy via email – they often lack personalized content at scale and do not have the resources to generate the personal themes for each campaign. Thus I am yet to see an organization really lead the way in this field. I could help you with both.

Lead Buying

Lead buying is simply a form of fast-food for marketers. A seemingly juicy amount of initial leads may seem delicious and tempting; but engage in this over the long term and watch your corporate health deteriorate. Why you might ask? Look at the basic economics of the equation. If anyone is selling you leads, you can guarantee it is costing less for them to generate them than the price that you are acquiring the contact for. Why would you be content paying the middle man when if you are smart, you could cut him out and make the experience more positive for your prospects whilst deferring your spend to build velocity.

I always use the analogy, is it fishing when you catch something at a fish farm? You are paying for the experience in a dam full of overfed, overcaught, unhealthy and unhappy customers. Is it really fishing? Is lead buying true marketing in this instance?

To me marketing in its purest sense involves an end-to-end relationship with the customer and an end-to-end ownership of the acquisition process. This gave rise to the inbound marketing movement – something which Hubspot has owned with a fair degree of dominance.

Furthermore – the major source for lead purchasers are review sites and directories – which have pay-to-play models and often resell their “stock” to multiple vendors. In addition to this, they often require your organizational buy-in to direct individuals to contribute content which they then re-purpose and use to generate more leads for your competitors on their own site, outrank you in key SEO terms and outrank you on competitive PPC terms. Not only do they ransom you into paying more for more users over time & to maintain your rankings, but are gamified to always be self-servicing; always one step ahead.

Replace lead buying with using the voice of your own customers to enhance the chances of conversion with your own leads and diversify your acquisition with a range of channels. Furthermore, if you are going to work with review sites, work with those that highly value content and do not charge you on a cost-per-click or cost-per-lead basis. If you are going to ask for feedback and make it public it is extremely important to derive as much quality data as possible – that is why modern-day advocacy programs should involve voice of the customer software to derive the most benefit from what has been a vary laborious and qualitative approach. Referral programs are also another method which can yield high quality yields without the need to purchase them.

Case Studies

The final no-no on this list is something most companies place too much emphasis on in this day and age. Case studies normally sit as static PDFs on a corporate website or drive, which are used upon request to display evidence to opportunities in the due diligence stage of a deal cycle. They are dated, heavily biased and lack the authenticity to be considered legitimate by buyers who are increasingly skeptical of claims which companies make about themselves.

This isn’t just an assumption I am making but something supported by concrete evidence; a Forrester report found here found that only 10% of consumers trusted branded content on corporate websites.

How do we respond to this as marketers? The first step is to make sure that if we are getting customers to go on the record we take the following steps.

The first is that we need to make sure that we approach this problem at scale. Case studies are notorious for the physical time required to interview, curate and seek permissions prior to use. Voice of the customer software is readily available to harness feedback at a granular level – with customs questions which are specific to the customer and the role of the individual/s participating.

Secondly, this content needs to be readily available for internal use. The fantastic side of using voice of the customer software is that this content can be used to personalize communications all the way from top of funnel landing pages to 1-1 email marketing messages. Additionally, sales teams should have this content at their fingertips to inspire dynamic talk tracks, follow up messages and prospecting emails – which should leverage similar pain points and situations of current customers who may be similar to emerging opportunities.

Additionally, this content needs to be refreshed and updated on a regular basis. As product changes are implemented and market developments occur – case-study type content needs to be dynamic to match.

Finally this materially ideally needs to be hosted on a 3rd party site with a public domain – so users can freely navigate the material from organic search results and feel that it is free from internal bias. Sirius Decisions quotes that 67% of the buyers journey is now done digitally and Forrester states self-servicing buyers are growing in prevalence, with 59% of customers preferring to do their research online versus with a rep. If your case studies are sitting on your site and are unindexed, how is this in any way helpful to your cause.

What is emerging as the alternative?

I call it Reviews 2.0. Forrester states a number of things are more influential than case studies – but two in particular I’d like to highlight – 70% of US buyers highly trusted recommendations from friends and family and 46% trusted online consumer reviews. What happens if you merged the two?

Content, sourced directly from trusted friends and peers – filtered at the highest level for professional quality, published independently for authenticity and then syndicated at scale on a social level, for other professionals to contribute too and enrich the content.

Not only is this possible right now but it is a reality for many firms I am personally implementing this with; who are taking customer content and using it to build trust and grow their business to all new heights. User generated content is superior to case studies as it is achievable at scale, usable internally through syndication and thematical cataloging, updatable and hosted on a 3rdparty site publicly. Conventional review sites still operate at the Reviews 0.5 level vs 2.0 – they see shady content only as a means to an end to generate more leads and create more short-sighted revenue.

Now imagine this….

You are buying software and arrive at a highly personalized landing page which not only has content relevant to your location, role and competitors; but the landing page can tell you which of your friends have bought the tool within the last six months – similar to TripAdvisor and the Facebook integration.

In seconds, a chat window pops up connecting you with your friend to seek their guidance on making a purchasing decision rather than connecting you with a sales rep. Revolutionary? Yes. Evolutionary – Yes, I’d love to show you how.

Welcome to Reviews 3.0

Summary

Forget email newsletters, they are out for personalized 1-1 communications and use of push notifications

Forget lead buying – growing your own lead base, take control of your destiny and develop inbound marketing

Forget case studies – get into the present and look at Reviews 2.0 and the future in Reviews 3.0 to place your business in a future-proof state and to capitalize on public visibility and usage of this content to achieve pipeline velocity.