For many of us, marketing is an afterthought. By providing customized solutions, we help clients effectively communicate with their customers. But how much time do we spend doing the same thing for our own businesses? End users can get printing from numerous sources, and effective marketing is one way to distinguish your company. I'm pleased that E. Brooks Warner is sharing his insight about internet marketing:
As I consider recent changes in marketing, I must choose internet use as the most significant. Do we marketers love the changes brought about by this phenomenon? Frankly, I would choose other descriptors.
Before I discuss internet marketing, it's important to mention two other marketing trends (both troubling). One is the alarming degree of media fragmentation throughout the world. Two, as we know from our weekend grocery shopping, is the fact that product managers proliferate brands with a frenzy resembling a swarm of feeding piranha.
Why is it important to understand the utility of the internet as it relates to marketing? Because e-marketing has confused all of us, and because this confusion has far-reaching implications for making mistakes and wasting money. Adding to the confusion is a new generation of experts. These are folks who have written seemingly countless books, articles and web sites about how different the internet prospect is from other people. They tell us the internet user doesn't read; she skims and refuses to scroll down more than a page. They tell us never to give anything away on the internet. While "free" is universally acclaimed as the most powerful word in direct mail, experts tell us it creates distrust when seen on the internet.
Balderdash! I'm sure some of what the electronic twerps say is true, but I find that their lists are jam-packed with tactical considerations any copywriter or creative director is paid to know. Do these experts believe that agencies have been treating traditional media equally? Do they think we write the same way for radio and outdoor advertisements?
The value marketers must bring to their internal and external clients is to help deploy the internet's capabilities strategically. For marketers, the internet is a medium. Until we treat it as such, giving it status equal to the traditional major media, it will continue to be misused and misunderstood.
My job is to sit with clients and help them evaluate all possible means for delivering messages to their constituencies. Too often, I hear about colleagues who do the same, but don't include the internet. They save it until last because it's "special." They might say, "Wouldn't it be fun to do a Flash banner on the Staples site and see what happens?"
Five years ago, maybe. Today, it's time to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the internet as objectively as possible, just like we do with print advertising, direct mail and public relations.
Some experts would respond, "Watch out for the differences!" To them, I say our message and task will never change. We'll always be charged with finding and keeping customers in a way that generates profits. That's why smart marketing is so important, even as internet marketing is misunderstood.
Phil Schmidt is president of distributorship Advanced Systems & Forms Inc., Livonia, Mich., and president of DMIA.
