Spoiler alert!
If you don't want to know what the Gartner Spend summary says and you want to read it for yourself, don't read on.
For those of you, still with me, unsurprising the marketing spend survey has been saying the same thing for the last few years. Marketing spend is going up and then, covid hit.
"No shit sherlock" I bet you are saying to yourself.
I think we know all of that, but we still talk with companies that don't seem to realise that the world has changed.
I recall meeting with a marketer (pre Covid) and she said she used advertising to market the products of the company she worked for. I asked her "what about ad-blockers?" and she replied, with no hint of irony, or what she was saying replied "yes, we all use them in the marketing team, we hate ads".
Marketing Has Changed
The budget itself in the spend survey is a mark of the guilty. Why? Gradually increasing budgets! Why is this suspect? It's suspect because it just proves that marketing isn't working.
But Why Did Marketing Budget Increase Year on Year?
Why would you need to increase your budget year on year?
Manufacturing will be looking at ways to strip out costs, Finance is looking at ways to strip out costs, sales is looking at ways to strip out costs. In fact all departments are looking at ways to strip out costs, .... apart from Marketing.
This may be why this study from the Fournaise Marketing Group found 80% of CEOs don’t trust their CMOs.
The Problem Marketing Has
We all know that the buyer isn't interested in any form of interrupt marketing, such as advertising, email marketing and cold calling. It's called interrupt, as that it what it has to do. Interrupt you and then broadcast a message.
You are working away, you need to get an important report out for your Bosses Board meeting and the phone goes. It's somebody trying to flog you something you don't want. Of course, we live in an age where all cold callers have a script and the only answer is yes! So you have to put the phone down on the person, which nobody likes. We all hate cold callers and we all hate cold emailers as much!
The Technology and Legislation Solution To Kill Interrupt Marketing
Cold calling - Luckerly technology has come to our rescue. The Apple operating system update iOS 13 blocked cold calling. Of course, buyers have this switched on. You either know the person calling (the name will be in the address book) or the call just goes to voicemail. Cold callers, soon learn that leaving voicemails are a waste of time.
Email marketing - European GDPR, put an end to email marketing. I now have to be opted in to receive your emails .... of course as buyers we have all opted out. With fines of 4% of global turnover, some companies still want to play Russian roulette with email
Adverts - Advertising, ad blocker growth increases, more surprisingly, Coca-Cola recently halted ad spend, with a statement from the CEO that, “There is limited effectiveness to brand marketing.”
As none of us are searching social looking at ads, we are on social, consuming content, so when it was pointed out that Content Marketing ROI is 7 times greater than paid ads, nobody was surprised.
We Have Transformed In Work and Play on Social Through The Pandemic
In this report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.
But what does this mean for your sales and marketing?
Simon Kemp research states
4.57 billion people around the world now use the internet, accounting for close to 60 percent of the world’s total population.
The internet and Social media isn't a fad and it's not going away, in fact usage is accelerating, and now a tipping point has been reached.
Fact: Social Media Has Reached a Tipping Point
Simon points out that there are now more people on social media than not on social media.
In fact, Simon Kemp stated recently that 4 out of 10 of the global social media users, use social media for work related purposes.
What’s more, the pace of growth appears to have accelerated in recent months, despite the global total having already passed the halfway mark.
In fact this research shows that we have gained ten years of digital transformation in just 3 months.
What Does This All Mean for sales and Marketing?
A company's presence on social is now a business imperative.
Simon Kemp's research..
"Given the broadening role of social media in people’s lives, it’s important that marketers and communicators think more broadly about where social media fits in their plans.
Critically, social media is increasingly a ‘layer’ that permeates almost every aspect of our audiences’ daily lives, rather than being a distinct ‘destination’ with a more siloed sphere of influence.
The trick to making the most of social media today is to understand how these platforms can complement and augment all of our marketing and communication activities.
My advice would be to think less about populating a content calendar, and focus more on identifying and initiating the conversations that matter most to you and the audiences that you care about.
So How Are You Going To Create Business?
You want pipeline, you can see that the current efforts of advertising, email and cold calling results are getting less and less, where as your audience has shifted onto social. Maybe it's time to take your sales team and get on social too?
Not as a "random act of social" but with a data driven sales methodology.
Social Selling Case Study
Eric Doyle, he's a partner of ours. He posted a piece of content, it currently has 165 likes and 37 comments and has been viewed 18,292 times.
It's created for him 124 leads.
28 outbound connections.
13 new inbound connections.
6 meetings (1 CEO, 1 COO, 2 MDs, 2 FDs)
1 Proposal
All from 10 minutes of work, all for free!
If We Know In Our Heart Of Hearts That Marketing is Broken Why Do We Still Plough Budget Into The Things That Are Broken?
We know in our heart of hearts that advertising, email marketing and cold calling are no longer fit for purpose.
We also know that the research and all the finds point away from the use of these out moden processes so why do still insist to plough money into them?
1. Fear - The fear of admitting that we have got it wrong for so many years?
2. The Marketing Agency - Still peddling us the same old lies?
3. Unsure to step away from legacy marketing and sales methods?
We can help you with all of these. We help business present to the Board alternative plans, one that are fit for the Covid19 world. We will help you measure your use of social, both in terms of the metrics that sales want, leads and revenue and the metrics that you have used in marketing, clicks, impressions etc.
It's Time to Work Out Which Side of History You Want to be Remembered for!
There are clear winners and losers here in sales and marketing ... it's time to decide which way your business is going to go.
If you want more information about how we turned social selling from being an art into a science contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team local to you
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/
Roll-forward just two months to the middle of July, and a poll of almost 300 marketing leaders found that, as the COVID-19 crisis continued to deeply impact marketing, the proportion of respondents expecting a budget cut of more than 5% grew to 59%. Disturbingly, the proportion expecting a significant cut of more than 15% had grown to almost a third of respondents. And 15% cuts are just the start data from Gartner polls of CFOs finds marketing firmly in focus for future cuts throughout 2020 and heading into 2021.
