One of the issues people are grappling with today, is that Marketing, as we knew it doesn't work anymore.

We are all so much more sophisticated in the way we buy, are are also so much more sophisticated in the way we are able to filter out the noise of modern digital marketing.

In the Enterprise B2B space, where I work, Advertising does not work anymore.  Nobody looks at ads or remembers them and that's the problem with paid media.  You cannot do it for a short period, you have to keep doing it.  And, of course, I go back to the fact that, does anybody actually look a ads?  I'll add to that the growth of ad-blockers by 30% year-on-year, Chrome and Mozilla have an arms race to produce a web browser that blocks ads and Apple as a hardware vendor supports this to.  The direction of travel is only one way.

Email marketing has now pretty much died since GDPR.  There were thousands of tools that allowed you to send more and more emails.  Of course, we know this and we just don't open them, or, like me, you set up rules so that the emails go straight to junk.  It's interesting to see on LinkedIn conversations about who and what you can email.  It doesn't matter, I still have the right to remain forgotten, which I have invoked many, many times.  Sending unsolicted emails does not work.

Cold calling, certainly in Europe, died two years ago.  The vision that the Finance Director of Oracle is sitting at her desk and waiting for your call so you can pitch for 20 minutes is total fallacy.  In Europe, ask to speak to the CFO of a company and the reception / switchboard will just laugh at you.

Events and seminars have fallen through the floor, one company we spoke to, their output from events has fallen by 60% over the last 5 years.  Most conferences and webinars are just sales pitches, so people don't go.  Which means there is less and less margin to create events, so speakers are paid less, so you get more sales pitches.  It's a self fulfilling philosophy.

Corporate marketing is dead.  Nobody listens to you telling everybody how great you are.  it's just the same as everybody else (so is your web site) and people just filter it out as noise.

So where do you go?  Go to where your customers are, of course.  On social Media.

What is it that people want?  They want insightful and educational content.

What is it that you have that nobody else has?  Your employees!

The trick today, is activating your employees to talk on social.  You do this by empowering them.  Obviously train them as to what they can and cannot do.  Activate them so they speak in their voice.  The benefits is that you will gain keyword optimised content, that your prospects and customers will want to read, engage and amplify.  You will get this at a faster rate than can be produced by any agency or your internal team.  And it's free.

Such keyword optimised content will give the influencer marketing, the SEO, the user generated content and position you as the only choice not just in your market sector for marketing and sales but also employer of choice for jobs.

Maybe it's time to switch budget from the activities that are not working and give employee advocacy a try?