The Hybrids are Coming: Evolution of the Prototype Marketer
Posted on 28. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Guest Posts, human resources, inbound marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, social media marketing, social media ROI, social media staffing
Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) is founder and CEO of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency, and author of The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley).
Digital marketing has revolutionized the industry, and the job market. Corporate marketing departments and marketing agencies struggle to recruit and retain qualified professionals for career paths that did not exist three years ago, while academic institutions are faced with the need to adapt curriculums to the real-time nature of business.
The most valued talent in the emerging marketing agency ecosystem will be hybrids. Although specialists, connectors, and soloists can still excel with focused competencies and service offerings, disruptors are built on the versatility of social-media and tech-savvy professionals. They possess exceptional copywriting skills, along with dynamic personalities that enable them to build strong personal brands.
Hybrid professionals are trained to deliver services across search, mobile, social, content, analytics, web, PR, and email marketing. They provide integrated solutions that used to require multiple agencies and consultants. — The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley), pp. 68.
Forward-thinking organizations seek hybrid professionals who are highly proficient writers, analytical and tech savvy, with a strong grasp on business, IT and human behavior. These next-generation professionals excel in the emerging core-marketing disciplines of mobile, analytics, social, web, search and content. They envision on a strategic level, building fully integrated campaigns, and they have the capabilities to execute on the tactical level, conducting activities that drive real business results.
But, there is a talent gap. Your organization can bemoan the lack of qualified professionals in the market, or it can take the initiative to create dynamic internal education programs, find candidates with A-player potential from diverse educational backgrounds, and develop employees into the hybrid professionals who will become the future leaders of our industry.
Catalysts for Evolution
In The Marketing Agency Blueprint, I outline three forces fueling transformation of the marketing-services industry: change velocity, selective consumption and success factors. These same catalysts have a direct affect on the type of talent organizations must recruit, train and retain:
1) Change Velocity
The rate of change, continually accelerated by technology innovations, has created growing demand for tech-savvy marketing professionals. Specifically, trends and shifts in consumer behavior, business processes, software, data analysis, communications and marketing philosophies have impacted the essential competencies and traits of prototype marketers.
2) Selective Consumption
Selective consumption is the basic principle behind inbound marketing, the philosophy made popular by HubSpot. In essence, consumers are tuning out traditional, interruption-based marketing methods, and choosing when and where to interact with brands.
As a result, organizations in every industry are shifting budgets away from print advertising, trade shows, cold calling and direct mail toward more measureable and effective inbound marketing strategies—fueled by content and social—that cater to consumer needs. Thus, marketers must be trained to plan and execute inbound marketing campaigns, integrated across traditionally siloed disciplines.
3) Success Factors
Marketing campaigns are not about winning awards for creative, building the flashiest websites, gaming Google for higher rankings, generating mounds of media coverage, or negotiating the lowest cost per thousand (CPM) as means to interrupt the largest audience. The job of a marketer is to produce results that impact the bottom line.
Marketers have the ability to consistently produce more meaningful outcomes—inbound links, click-through rates, website traffic, landing page conversions, content downloads, blog subscribers and leads—that can be tracked in real time and directly correlated to sales.
Rise of the Generalists
As Jay and Amber detail in The NOW Revolution, organizations should, “Search for well-rounded professionals with core business skills that can translate across roles and enable them to excel in an ever-changing environment.”
The future of marketing belongs to the generalists, the hybrids. These marketers are the key to increasing efficiency and productivity, building an insurmountable competitive advantage and fueling your organization’s growth.
So, the question becomes, is your business prepared to compete in the age of the hybrids?
Is Direct Mail Dead or New Uses for Old Tactics
Posted on 14. Jun, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Direct Mail, inbound marketing, Lead Conversion, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Is Direct Mail Dead or New Uses for Old Tactics
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
uzvards via Flickr
The first half of the title of this post is a question I get, in some variation, quite frequently these days. You could change the subject to email or face to face networking or press releases, but the implication is always that some long established marketing tactic has been supplanted by Twitter or Facebook.
My answer is always the same – nothing is dead – but the ways we use them have changed.
My take is that if you establish a strong marketing strategy, one that helps you build trust, and you fully understand the behavior and objectives of your ideal customer, then you can use almost any tactic to build your business.
In fact, some of the more “traditional” offline approaches have never been more effective when fused with technology and newer online approaches.
Digital has changed the customer communication environment fundamentally over the years and caused many to forgo the traditional broadcast tools.
But, smart marketers are discovering new ways to use old tools that are more in line with inbound marketing practices and are taking advantage of technology leaps to make a tactic like direct mail even more effective.
I return once again, as I do often, to my definition of marketing – getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you – if you can find a way to use a tactic to do that, than no tactic is dead or even out of bounds.
Even the often maligned Twitter auto DM is fair game if you can find a way to use it to build trust – the fact is few can, but my point is there are no set rules or magic tactics in this game.
Here are a few examples of new uses for old tactics:
- Use variable data printing on demand printing to create highly personalized direct mail pieces with unique images, stories and calls to action based on your customer database. The technology is there to do this in small batches with hundreds of variations.
- Use technology to produce postcards that invite each recipient to a personal landing page that features information tailored to their interests and alerts a sales team to initiate a further contact.
- Use traditional broadcast and print advertising to drive prospects to a series of free online videos that educate, entertain and inform – oh, and build know, like and trust.
Reaching markets and creating buzz about our products and services still requires an integrated approach – that part won’t ever change, but before you drop a proven way to reach your prospects from the mix consider how you might use it build trust instead of move product.
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