Making marketing relevant

I was at the BMA Chicago's BizBash event earlier this month having a conversation with Dr. Steve Kelly from DePaul University and Matt James from Source4 Printing. We were questioning the next 'buzz-word' or trend in Marketing. Matt may have said it first, but we thought 'Relevance Marketing'. Isn't that what marketing is always supposed to be? Whether it's direct marketing, interactive marketing, social marketing...and on and on.

I thought about this a while and determined, that sums it up. Marketing should be relevant to your customers, relevant to your business objectives, and relevant to your sales team (think things they can actually use).

It's amazing how marketing can get off track and tactical. Chasing the latest fad, cool creative ideas, fancy tactics. All are good and may apply at the right time. But I've had to stop clients and co-workers numerous times by saying "yeah, that's cool. What's it going to get you? How are you going to use it". I guess what I really mean is "Is that relevant to achieve an objective or strategy? Or just interesting"?

Case in point. My husband's company where he receives 'free' marketing support from me. He says one day, "hey, look at this cool video on a new service we are offering. It cost $3000". I said 'Nice. How are you going to use it". He says "Good point". Now my husband is not a dumb guy. He's just not a marketer thinking about these things. His cool video wasn't relative to an objective because he didn't even know how they were going to incorporate this fancy new service into the business. More importantly, it wasn't relevant, yet, to his clients as they did-not prove out the value. He didn't know if his clients would care. Now for $3000 to a firm JUST STARTING, they probably could have spent that money on some well placed PR to build awareness. Or a lead generation strategy.

So, think about. I would love to hear other stories and comments as I continue to share my experiences on marketing.

Jackie

Posted by Jackie Kuehl at 6/26/2008 10:35 AM
Categories: Marketing
 

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