When I was growing up you had this amazing thing called marketing.
I didn’t appreciate it at the time, because I was too young, but now that it’s gone, I really miss it.
It involved a combination of activities including:
- Creativity
- Good writing
- Genius ads
- Focus groups
- Demographics research
- Human Intelligence
It involved other things as well but those were the core components.
Then when no one was paying attention, marketing was taken away.
Even though the internet bears the brunt of the responsibility for killing marketing, all-together three factors are at play.
Factor #1: The marketing industry turned a blind eye when the definition of marketing was changed to social media marketing.
One day the internet gatekeepers changed the definition of marketing and decided that marketing meant social media marketing and no one in the marketing industry complained, filed a lawsuit or complained to any governing bodies. They just sat back and took it.
They placated themselves about this gross negligence with statements like “Well, we have to roll with the times. You have to go where the customers are, and where the customers are is online. So, you have to advertise to them on social media.”
At the same time if you ask any of these marketers, they will sheepishly admit that no one has ever been able to quantify the (ROI) Return on investment of social media activity.
Billions of dollars have been flushed into a system and no one can confirm if it actually works.
Factor #2: The activities associated with marketing changed and no one in the marketing industry had the courage to say that they were sleazy, icky and likely to alienate customers.
Currently, the activities associated with marketing include the following sequence:
- Draw the customer to your website through good Search Engine Optimization or writing articles about things you think they would be interested in.
- Immediately offer a lead magnet, or a trinket that you think they would find irresistible like a free eBook about how to get rich or how to be happy every day or something everyone wants.
- Use the lead magnet to get their email address.
- Use the email address to spend the rest of your natural life and theirs pummeling them with offers to buy something
The origin of the above sequence is worth noting because by sharing them here, the flaws in these two sources can be pointed out. The origin of the above sequence is rooted in two statements that are responsible for destroying marketing.
In the early days of the internet someone somewhere made a statement that everyone jumped on. The statement was, “The money is in the list.”
This means that even though there are many things that you can do to get customers to buy, the thing that has the greatest effect is getting them on your mailing list.
We can just stick a pin right there and quickly examine the second statement.
The second statement was, “Content is king”.
This means that if you can just continually provide your potential customers with great content, they will continually keep coming back to you.
When you separate the two statements and allow them to act independently, for example, allow the “Content is King” statement act on its own, here’s what you get.
You get content farms that exist only to churn out endless amounts of information that have no other purpose than to affect google search engine results.
This content is not designed to enhance your life, or make you a better person. In fact, it may make you a lesser person because it regularly insults your intelligence by telling you information that you already know, disguised as helpful new information that will change your life.
Yes, there is really an article out there on how to avoid slipping on the ice during the winter.
In Internet marketing courses, would be influencers and social media marketers are told that you must continually offer your customer value for free through these articles until they return the favor by buying something.
Quite often, this offering of value comes in the form of endless content which assumes you know nothing.
For example, it assumes that after living on the earth in a cold country for decades you do not know how to avoid slipping on the ice.
Content being king results in a never-ending stream of useless information that has no value other than SEO and guiding you to the lead magnet.
However, when “Content is King” is combined with “The money is in the list” the situation worsens.
You end up with 80 newsletters that arrive in your inbox every week from marketers who are trying to “offer value” for free until you one day decide to buy something from them.
Quite often, these newsletters are from websites that you bought something from once, never intending to sign up for these weekly updates.
The mind-boggling part is that these social media marketers have convinced themselves that you are reading their newsletter each time they send it and that you want to read their newsletter.
The truth of the matter is that the only thing that these newsletters add to your life is information overload. Nothing more.
Factor #3: Human intelligence is no longer valuable and so you no longer have to market to humans as if they are intelligent beings.
At some point intelligence stopped being a given. We were so used to being treated like idiots and reading articles designed for idiots that intelligence was taken off the table.
In 2022, this went full steam ahead when AI became mainstream. Yes, it’s true. The hottest new technology on earth right now is a technology that effectively outsources thinking.
It can write for you. It can think for you. It can come up with ideas when you can’t come up with any good ideas. It can organize information for you.
These were things that the human brain used to do. Even though AI is exciting, watching the same humans who have been treated like idiots for years, now actively outsourcing thinking is not.
So, that’s why I miss traditional marketing.
I don’t know if it will ever come back. If it left because it was horrible, I would not have minded.
However, since it left because humans parted ways with creativity, good sense and are on the verge of parting ways with thinking all-together, It’s kind of sad.
So, just in case you’re wondering if anybody noticed, Marketing, I want you to know how very much you are missed.
