Possibly I have too much time on my hands but lately but I have been pondering where modern marketing has evolved to and where it might be heading.
Not so very long ago marketing consisted of putting one sign up form on your website and capturing emails into one big list in Mailchimp or Aweber (and a few other programs but these were the leading ones). You sent out a newsletter every week… or month or whenever you remembered. The newsletter was one solid block of text talking about whatever took your fancy. There was Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. You placed content there as you thought about it on a topic you thought your followers would be interested in.
OK Maybe that is an over simplification and I accept that big business had more sophisticated marketing than that.
Where is marketing heading now?
The basic principles of who are your target clients, where do they hang out and what information are they interested in still underpins modern marketing. Just as it did when I was first working in Marketing back in 1988.
What has changed now can be categorised in a number of areas:
1.The segmentation of clients
With the arrival of software such as InfusionSoft, Ontraport, Active Campaign, Drip and ConvertKit came the ability to segment your clients based on tags applied for individual interests. Yes there is still the overall list but now there are many other lists based on any criteria you care to define – likes pink M&Ms, only wants to be contacted on Monday Afternoons! What is better this is setup to occur automatically.
2. Automation
Mailchimp and Aweber moved towards this some time ago however the newer marketing programs take it to a totally new level and often in a way that means anyone can setup complex conditional logic. For example:
Client signs up to watch a webinar > program automatically delivers confirmation > on set dates reminders are sent > after the webinar replay emails are sent > sequence then initiated to put them into another series of emails > individual can be stopped and started within a sequence > cold subscribers can be removed.
Complete set and forget (almost) Email marketing and sales funnels are merging.
3. Analytical Analysis
This is one are in which marketing is exploding with new functions being added all the time. This is the area that programs such as ActiveCampaign and Convert Kit excel and do so at a price point that is affordable. There is also the rise of software such as ConversionFly and WickedReports that will track the effectiveness of your entire sales funnel
- When and if a person opened an email.
- What results were obtained when form A verses form B was used.
- At what time durning the day did a target client see something
- Which part of my sales funnel is working, which part is not.
- What is converting, what isn’t
- Compare campaigns
- Get reports on everything
So although the emails are now set and forget that has been replaced by set > automatic delivery > analyse > improve.
Do I like these changes?
You bet! The analytical nerd in me loves information. Information is power. With information I can deliver better and better results. I don’t like spending money and wondering why the marketing is not working. I want to spend as little as possible for as great a return as possible.
What are you doing with your marketing?
Is it keeping up to date with modern marketing?
Do you want to get better return on investment from your marketing?
