Here’s a thing.

I was recently in Seattle and had a conversation with an organiser of a big conference there. It went like this.

Me: We have a view on the world of marketing, nobody looks at adverts, nobody reads marketing emails and nobody takes cold calls.

Event Organiser: Totally. I never read adverts, always delete sales and marketing emails and I never take calls from people who are not on my phone.

There was then a discussion about the terrible robo calls there are in the USA.

After that I asked the question.

Me: So how do you market your conference?

Event Organiser: We spend most of our budget on advertising, we have a 20,000 email list and my business partner cold calls.

Do you spot the irony?

Here we have somebody who admits they never look at ads, don’t open unsolicited emails and never takes cold calls, but expects other people to look at her adverts, read her unsolicited emails and take her cold calls.

This isn’t a one off, in fact we hear it all the time.

Why oh why do marketers the world over not want to listen to everybody else’s marketing message, but expect for us to listen to theirs!

Why?

Because with your product you are emotionally attached, it pays the mortgage.

But here’s a thing.

You have to remember that your buyer is just like you. 

We ignore all your messages. The money you spend on advertising is wasted, the time you spend writing those emails is wasted and all those cold calls you make and voice mails you leave that nobody returns is a waste of time.

It’s time to move your budget to social.

It’s time to have a personal brand where your customers and prospects see you as an expert. You build strong networks of contacts and you share excellent content that will inspire and educate your prospects and customers.

Social will get you inbound it will support your prospecting efforts so that you and the salesteam can become self-sufficient in prospecting.