The Meatball Sundae Imperative

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Instead of asking “How can we use the cool new tools of marketing to support our existing infrastructure?,”everyone in business should be obsessing over “How can we change what we do to grow because of the New Marketing devices that are available to us?

A new way of marketing is rapidly taking hold throughout the economy. This “New Marketing” isn’t based on a completely new technology, a single launch event or even on the success of any specific Website. Rather, it is the combination of a number of trends that have been heralded in by the ongoing advancement of better communications technologies.

To be specific, New Marketing is the combined result of these kinds of trends:

Direct communication is new possible between producers and consumers, free of middlemen.

Consumers can amplify their opinions about anything through the use of blogs, social networks and other communication vehicles. Consumers can also communicate with each other and pass on their opinions with ease

As more and more producers enter a market niche, the demand for authenticity grows rather than diminishes.

Consumers today have short attention spans because there is so much media clutter and background noise.

In every market, a “Long Tail” effect is happening. There are fewer hit products as more and more people can track down and buy products that match their own personal preferenes.

Outsourcing is all pervasive. It’s very hard to tell who makes what these days, and different elements can be grafted in from anywhere in the world.

Search engines like Google slice and dice everything so it becomes feasible to find all kinds of things anywhere in the world.

Interruption marketing–shoving ads in front of consumers while they are trying to do something else–is rapidly declining in effectiveness. In its place, permission marketing–where customers grant organizations they trust permission to deliver them messages about additional products–is becoming far more powerful.

Attention is a very scarce commodity nowadays. Consumers are literally spoiled for choices. They are therefore only attracted by “big ideas” and everything else just melts into the background blur.

What’s interesting and noteworthy is that New Marketing faovers some marketing approaches far more than others. The successful organizations of yesterday were optimized around the marketing tools that worked best at that time. That cuccess doesn’t automatically translate into the new tools. Specifically, New Marketing doesn’t demand better marketing tools. There’s too much transparency for that. New Marketing is based on providing better products and better services delivered by better organizations and then letting happy customers spread the word.

The functions of an organization can be visualized quite simply and directly in this way:

Close Sales
Make lots of noise to create awareness
Decide on a distribution channel
Have a competitive advantage in manufacturing, technology or research

Traditional marketing really only concerned itself with the top of the pyramid activities. Most organizations were built on the premise that what happened at the would pay for the rest of the operation. The job of marketing was to leverage the company’s investments in the foundation of the business. If marketing didn’t deliver, then changes were made and new people were put in charge of marketing.

Traditional marketing is fine for spandard products and average stuff. There will always be a place for traditional marketing, but to deliver growth, too many traditional marketers are dabbling with New Marketing ideas. You simply cannot add all of the gimmickry of New Marketing on the top and hope the best. There’s a basic disconnect that must be addressed. New Marketing requires to be made to the entire business structure, not just the marketing vehicles.

To get an organization into sync with New Marketing, the business foundation has to be built around the marketing rather than the other way around. Specifically:

The challenge of closing is the same with New Marketing as it ever has been with traditional marketing. You have to earn people’s trust.

Noisemaking is dramatically different under New Marketing. Instead of buying ads, you need to develop viral marketing concepts, invest in Google AdWords and place video clips on YouTube. This is quite a different approach from simply buying ads.

Distribution is also changing. Not only can you sell online, but you can also use affiliates, person-to-person sales, megastores, microstores, subscription programs and more. Digital distribution channels are changing the dynamics here very quickly, and you need to think this through if you’re to make the most of New Marketing.

New Marketing is radically changing the way products are developed, designed and produced. If you build something worth talking about, you’ll be rewarded quickly and impressively. If you can involve your customers in developing the next generation product they would most like to own, similarly impressive can happen.

Companies of all sizes are now using the tools of New Marketing to do business differently. You can either get on the bandwagon and ride the trend or stay as you are and miss out on some of the best growth opportunities of the twenty-first century.

The new rules are here and they’re not going away. If your assets are synchronized with you can do with the New Marketig, you win.

–Seth Godin

New Marketing doesn’t demand better marketing. It demands better products, services and organizations.

–Seth Godin

There’a significant opportunity here, perhaps the biggest of your career. The opportunity is to note the distinction between an old-style organization and a powerful movement. Either choice can work, as long as you in fact make the choice. And commit.

–Seth Godin