What if... we killed digital marketing?

Can we just cancel marketing and go back to operating in towns with posters??

I often muse about what would happen if digital marketing ceased to exist. I am a young thing, but old enough to remember pre-internet days when your activity would be limited to plastering clever posters around the town, placing the odd ad in the local paper if you could afford to, or if you were really gung-ho, you’d even do a radio commercial.?

(TV commercials were only accessible for big shots)?

What I remember most about my first entrepreneurial escapade and ‘marketing’ was that it took up much less of my time! Also, we called it publicity back then. None of my business partners ever uttered the ‘M’ word and I’m talking about the ‘90s, not the 1900s!

It was, compared to now, easy-peasy. Your business was confined to a geographically manageable area, and housed inside a physically visible building, as was your competition. The most vicious thing that might happen would be that your rivals would tear down your posters or dump a load of your flyers in the dumpster. You’d be enraged, of course, but just for five minutes.?

Those were the days when most of your time could be dedicated to the actual matter of executing whatever business you were in. You know what I mean? So, if I ran a flower shop – which I didn’t – then I would be making sure I had the right flowers to sell, a good delivery service, a lovely shop front, and that I was ready for funerals and St. Valentines. I’d spend my day interacting with customers, suppliers or browsers and fretting over dying flowers.

Oh, heady days.

I wouldn’t spend half my day racking my brains to produce a groundbreaking post to feed out to the increasingly complex digital landscape about the latest trends in petals or pruning. Nope. I’d be working.?

Maybe I am just grumpy because I have been grappling with a particular marketing platform that I will not name. I’ve been getting ready to finally sell something that required a lot of work to create. Finally!

Of course, it’s true that digital and AI stuff makes our lives easier, but I want just to add in a BIG BUT – easier only once you’ve successfully navigated what feels like multiple Everest-like learning curves to figure it all out.

Once you’ve figured the platforms out, usually through a frustrating strategy of trial and error and desperate searching for YouTube wisdom as you hit one confusing obstacle after another, you are still not done! Nope… at every marketing step, you must produce more and more.?

More text is required, more images are needed, and video is simply a must. You must design sequences, campaigns, funnels, broadcasts, landing pages, and to boot, design lead magnets…. Kill me now.?

Can we cancel marketing and go back to just operating in our little towns with posters??

By the way, the image above was generated by AI, I put in the theme words of this post as prompts. I guess another thing to figure out!