Times are changing, but marketing fundamentals haven’t

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/08/2023 (862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since 2019, I had the privilege of coming into your homes and offices with my monthly Free Press articles. Over these five years there was no shortage of marketing topics to discuss or stories to share, both local and beyond. My aim is to help provide insight and clarity on how to improve your business performance.

My focus for this retrospective is to assess what has happened in marketing and what has changed in my profession over the past five years. Spoiler alert — nothing.

When I say nothing, I mean the marketing fundamentals have not changed. Tactics have changed and new fads have come…and gone. Meanwhile, leading companies have leveraged their customer relationships and insights to continue to execute their winning game plan.

Let’s begin with a couple of the “here and gone” marketing fads that were going to “change the future of business” in the past five years.

The rise of Tik Tok as a platform and the use of social media influencers are two of the most recent “must do” marketing trends. Companies hire influencers on the latest popular platform to promote their product, with varying levels of success. A June 2023 survey by EnTribe indicated that the trust level of influencers is only around 12 per cent. This compares to 86 per cent for regular user-generated content (word of mouth from regular consumers). And I have not seen a successful business use Tik Tok effectively.

David Ogilvy, one of the advertising greats, was against the use of celebrity endorsements (influencers in their day) because the person typically outshone the product. That is, consumers remembered the spokesperson more than the endorsed product. For me, the use of Michael Bublé to endorse the beverage Bubly is a genius move that plays on the singer’s name and reinforces the beverage. I am hard-pressed to find a current example with similar impact.

Other trends that swept into the marketing mainstream included NFT (non-fungible tokens), Pokémon Go, and the metaverse. All these were going to be the “next big thing” that every company had to grab hold of. The fear of missing out was prevalent and loudly proclaimed by media experts and pundits.

Well, none of these trends have changed marketing for the better. Why? Because leading companies don’t react to these trends, they respond to customer needs. Leading companies are customer-centric in all their activities and ensure they consistently deliver superior value, as defined by their customers.

Constantly chasing fresh marketing “shiny objects” is not part of any winning game plan because this is not a focus on winning customers. Unlike sports game plans focused on defeating opponents, winning game plans prioritize earning your customers’ business through delivering superior value.

The importance of understanding your customer is something that has not changed in decades. Yet, I see so many companies that seem unwilling to truly become customer-centric and serve their customers better. Consistently poor customer service and hard to navigate websites are but two examples that reinforce my point. Research from Market Culture has demonstrated that the more customer-centric you are, the more profitable you will be.

As we look to the next five years, I will guarantee (a bold statement for sure) that a focus on your customer will remain paramount for your business success. This is regardless of the number of “marketing silver bullets” that people create.

I make this claim as I assess the explosive growth and now tempered expectations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) large language models such as ChatGPT. Launched in November 2022, the wondrous capabilities and industry disruption predicted in short order has not materialized. While I believe that automating low level and repetitive tasks is something AI can do efficiently, I am not convinced it has achieved true creative breakthroughs.

Consider a scenario where every business in a category asked ChatGPT (or their AI tool of choice) to create a game plan based on the same prompts. It is highly probable that every company will end up doing the same thing. This “sea of sameness” does not serve the customer better. In fact, you are failing to serve customers effectively and you potentially anger them with mediocre solutions.

The past five years have reinforced my belief in the marketing fundamentals of product, place, price and promotion. An understanding of what your customer values and a coherent plan, where every employee knows their role in delivering value to customers, continue to drive successful marketing strategies. Nothing has really changed, except whether you choose to chase unicorns or customers.

Tim’s bits: You design a winning game plan to win customers first, not just to defeat your competition. Leading companies know you win by delivering the superior value your customers are searching for. Consequently, your customers will get better, do things faster, or deliver more effectiveness for their end customers. Keeping the marketing fundamentals as a core to your winning game plan will provide the necessary foundation to help you win customers and keep them.

tim@tk3consulting.ca