Insights on Today’s Marketing Issues

To celebrate the 128th birthday of its founder Colonel Harland Sanders, KFC is giving a college donation to the first baby named Harland born on September 9, Sanders’ birthday. By the way, the name Harland is currently ranked 3,257 on the list of most common baby names for 2017. KFC is hoping to inspire the next generation of Harlands. Talk about a tall task.

We have a local minor league baseball team in town and every one of their ads has the line: “Tickets Are Going Fast.” All it takes is one look at their parking lot and it’s obvious this is a lie. Let alone look at the box score the next day and see the attendance figure. This is shameless exaggeration at its worst, and reminds the consumer how crass marketers can be so they lose credibility and trust in the marketing process.

I write about this because although there is a lot of talk about technology and data and how marketing is changing. I’ve covered it in this column numerous times just this year alone. But what hasn’t changed is a ritual that happens every day – the pitch.

WTF – What’s The Future? Good question. To us, there is no doubt that digital marketing is the future. Thousands of people join different social media communities and use different social media platforms to share and consume content − your content if you have mastered the skill of digital marketing.

Weirdly we try to appeal to absolutely everyone in the universe, saying nothing that might alienate even the tiniest micro-segment, and this guarantees that we actually resonate with no one. Instead of widening your net, narrow it and focus on the audience who would be your best customers. These are your people and you need to communicate with them with what they expect and want to hear from you. Sounds simple, but time and time again marketers want everyone − and they can’t have everyone.

81% of individuals have been convinced to purchase a service or product by watching a brand’s video. Or when a video and text are used on the same page, 72% would rather use video to learn about a product or service. It’s time to switch up your video strategy, and implement one rather than waiting for an occasional drone footage that may come in from a customer.

Research studies report that half of all U.S. websites are over three years old and are so slow-loading that they are turning people off from even looking at them. Patience runs very thin in today’s “I want it now” mentality, with Amazon and others promising delivery by this afternoon.

Amazon sold more than one million smart-home devices (Alexa) on July 17, the second day of its 36-hour Prime Day event, making it the biggest sales day for smart-home devices in the e-commerce giant’s history.

As technology becomes more commonplace, people are changing the way they interact with it. In search, we are seeing that people are beginning to use more basic conversational search queries, which allows them to ask more pointed and specific questions about our products and services. Such as “Alexa, what laptop should I buy?” Mobile searches for “should I” have grown over 65% in just two years.

Or in this case, a short story. Several frogs lined up to race to the top of a hill. As they started to jump, spectators muttered: “It’s too far,” and “It’s too steep,” and “They will never make it.” The frogs began to doubt themselves. One by one they admitted defeat. Except for one frog, who continued to climb and climb till he alone reached the top of the hill. The crowd asked the brave little amphibian “How on earth did you manage it?” But there was no answer. The crowd suddenly realized the frog was deaf.