I'm SAD to say that your Biggest Enemy is YOU

Let's do some posts on Facebook without reach, some programmatic towards users without a name and some video ads putting makeup on a pig. Welcome to the marketing landscape of 2018. A place where we have managed to return to the status quo before digital.

Stuck in process once again, we have established new behaviours that are equally useless in an ever changing battle for attention. There are no fast fixes anymore. There are no quick activations. The viral scenario has changed from many to many, into a place where you truly have to change your tactics into a 1-to-1 process (or 1-to-3-to-1).

The large platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google do not reward "mellanmj?lk" (Swedish popular milk that has a fat percentage between the two other existing milk versions) anymore. You have to pay them penalties in terms of media spend to get the visibility that you used to get.

No problem. All of these platforms are turning into transactional traffic sources and so you will be able to get better return on investment if you buy right. However, if you're looking for a miracle viral mechanic, you can't call me a week in advance anymore. That won't work anymore. You can't cheat the system anymore, or at least, I won't help you do it the way it has to be done to work anymore.

So. What should you do?

You have to start doing things for real. Build first, learn more, grow linearly if you do what it takes, grow exponentially if you deserve to.

Already a few years back I started telling ya'lls that you should be working to get people's identifiers collected in a bucket outside the large platforms. I hate to tell you "I told you so", but now I am saying it - I told you so.

Your lazyness to take care of your existing customers will start costing you dearly the coming years. Your focus on your product rather than your utility will serve you nothing but problems in the coming years.

What I mean by the last thing is that you haven't understood the foundation of the Internet. Your product is not the physical product online. It is merely the digital representation of it in the shape of a photo or a video. The love someone experience when experiencing your stuff "for real" is not what they experience when they look at your stuff in a 2x2 inch photo through their phone.

If you want people to feel what they feel when they wear your shirt, ride your car, eat your food, travel to your location, in the digital space, you have to invent a completely new media product that makes people feel the same thing. The focus should be the feeling and the utility that people get to experience when in contact with your brand - not the product.

Or in Swedish words: Sl?pp sargen f?r f-n.

Take the void that exist between experiencing riding in a car for hours and watching a 30s car commercial. The difference between sitting in the car alone, enjoying a long documentary on the radio whilst watching the landscape pass by outside. That feeling of being completely alone with your thoughts.

Then consider most car commercials. Usually communicated through video. Zooming the dashboard - the place you never look if you're an experienced driver - then zooming out the window to hover above the car - who on earth has that driving experience - then you get some kind of x-ray shot showing the technology of the car mixed with some nature and then some catchy byline.

THAT IS NOT THE EMOTIONAL UTILITY OF DRIVING A CAR. A drone shot over open spaces do not make me feel free when I watch the video through my mobile screen. It merely makes me feel trapped in the environment where I am watching it.

To capture that feeling, utility etc in a digital environment - you have to invent a new thing that represents that utility in the digital space. Not because it is communicating your existing product the best way, but because it is the best product you can meet the same needs with in a digital environment.

I don't know. Total sidebar from where I wanted to communicate in this post. I guess I am just frustrated because of the new habits that I have been guilty of advocating for, now are deemed ineffective and there are new ways to communicate for those who dare to question everything we do, once more.

If we just let go of the institutional, product centered, process oriented, optimise focused and industrial perspective that the physical world so naturally has offered for us to earn, gain and organise through.

So. I don't write stuff without giving you some concrete advice on how to turn the tide. This will be no exception.

1. You need to work up a solid customer care unit that develops conversion points that separate users into consumer, promoter, hang around etc. buckets. You need to treat them all differently and they should be given an objective to either generate more money or save money.
2. You truly need to collect peoples identifiers (emails and phone numbers) elsewhere than on the large platforms - enabling you to build real relationships over time with your consumers - EVEN if that means that you actually have to read through and dare to work with the new rules of GDPR which beyond the myths of "oh my god we can't do nuttin'" actually gives you a lot more freedom to communicate that previous legislations didn't (but then again, you didn't care that you broke the law before...)
3. You need to focus more on utility than process. You don't have to talk to people if you have nothing to say. You don't need to have a post on Facebook every day just because it is the most tactically correct thing to do to feed the algorithm. If Facebook doesn't serve your purpose, you should not serve Facebook but rather think of new ways to work through your existing customers
4. If you're shit, and you haven't understood it yet, but know it in your belly, you'll get to feel it pretty darn soon unless you change. You are only special as long as you're not a commodity. Most things are becoming commodities. So will your thing. You thus have to invent new things that are not commodities, that are truly unique and that meets the same utility that your product used to meet, before it became a commodity.
5. Find a process to f* with your existing process. Or better yet. Replace your process with a principle and question everything you do with that principle. Principles are stronger than values as it is a tool which you can actually do something with. It makes a selection for you.

If you don't do the above, I am sad to say that your biggest enemy is you. And perhaps I'm not making any sense at all as I have been thinking about this a bit too much and might be leaving important bits and pieces out. But please tell me where I'm wrong and I will change my mind, change the post or simply sit back and grump away.

Either way. In the end, I want to help out. I want to work with you, think with you and discuss with you on how to solve these challenges the NON-lazy way. I believe that together we can do it, we just need to start actually doing it.