By Blake DuBose and Mike DuBose
If the Beatles or Rolling Stones began their careers today, there’s a good chance that they might fail! All facets of our society are evolving, and what worked in years past won’t work now. The technological revolution has changed how our culture communicates and how we use the media for news, advertising, information, and entertainment. In a 2010 Time magazine article, futurist Ray Kurzweil estimated that we’re doubling technological progress every two years. During the next 50 years, we will see 32 times more knowledge advancement than in the last century.
Marketing, too, is radically changing. If you fail to follow innovations in customer communication, smart competitors can wipe out your business—and if you doubt that, remember two words: Circuit City! Best Buy crushed them through effective marketing and customer-friendly store designs. However, Best Buy itself is now losing market shares due to fierce competition from Internet sites like Amazon.com, proving that businesses must grow, change, and evolve along with market conditions.
In the 1950s, the Darlington, SC area (Mike’s hometown) had one newspaper and one television station…with one channel! Up until the mid-1990s, television and newsprint dominated the field of advertising options.
Now fast forward to 2011. According to our research:
- Cable and satellite television have 1000+ channels. A movie rental can now be downloaded directly to your television or computer.
- Sirius/XM satellite radio boasts 20 million subscribers. You can drive coast-to-coast listening 24/7 to one genre-specific, advertisement-free station.
- Time spent visiting social media networks exceeds that spent e-mailing. Forty-four percent of adults login to Facebook daily.
- Sixty percent of adults report using cell phones to remain connected with their social networks.
- In 2010, advertisers spent more money on Internet advertising than print.
- Consumers are spending more time online than watching television, listening to radio, or reading books and magazines.
- Print advertising fell by 8% in 2010 and will likely decline another 6% in 2011.
- Telephone directories will soon disappear in favor of online directories.
- Many newspapers and magazines have gone bankrupt. US News and World Report announced in 2010 that readership had declined by half and their print version will be discontinued in favor of publishing exclusively online.
With such a radical paradigm shift taking place, what should leaders consider in 2011?
Realize that different generations respond to diverse marketing techniques: Baby boomerMike reads three daily newspapers. Blake, a Generation Y member, views his news at CNN.com.
Find out what works: In a 100-business survey we conducted, not one respondent had asked their most profitable customers how they first learned about their business. At Columbia Conference Center and DuBose Web Group, we found that the Yellow Pages were driving a lot of our callers, but the clients who signed contracts tended to find us via the Internet. If you don’t currently evaluate your advertising impact, start now!
Invest marketing dollars effectively: Focus your resources in the media that research proves brings you profitable customers. However, remember the “passive advertising” effect. Someone may see your ad in Columbia Business Monthly or Pee Dee Business Journal and tell a friend. When you ask customers how they learned about your business, they will say, “A friend told me.” We funnel some funds into selected monthly magazine advertisements, which are read by people in business waiting rooms.
Develop a great website: Customers need multiple ways to locate your business, review your services, and stay up-to-date with your company. Usually, a website is a potential customer’s first glance at your organization, and, if poorly constructed or visually unappealing, it will probably be their last. Companies should build attractive, interactive, and user-friendly websites. Our customers frequently tell us that their clients chose them over the competition based on positive impressions of their website.
Keep your website up-to-date: A website is only as good as its content. If you don’t keep your website fresh, prepare to lose customers. Quality web companies create sites that allow your staff to manage site content through customized web-based management systems or blogs. This provides timely updates to website users while bypassing the need to waste time and money contacting expensive, busy web designers each time. Blogs are effective tools for distributing company news, articles, charity event information, photographs, and videos. Regularly updated websites inspire interest and keep your business in the forefront of consumers’ minds.
Make it easy for customers to find your website: Many companies waste fortunes building beautiful websites with poor marketing effectiveness. Most potential customers seek out your services on search engines like Google, so your website needs to appear on the first page of their searches. Work with your web designer on an effective Internet marketing plan that includes search engine optimization coding for maximum results.
Utilize social media: In 2010, Facebook reached 500 million users and became the most visited website in the world, surpassing even Google. Hitwise said Facebook accounts for 9% of all US visits and USA Today reported its value at $50 billion! Facebook’s interactive network allows you to manage your own business pages, providing a way to engage those who want to follow your organization. To view a sample Facebook page and read astonishing statistics about its marketing power, visit www.facebook.com/dubosewebgroup.
Twitter is another beneficial social networking tool. As with Facebook, you can create a page for your organization that allows users to keep up with your latest news. With one-fifth the number of people who use Facebook, Twitter is so powerful that musician 50 Cent made $8.7 million in a weekend by encouraging his Twitter followers to buy a certain stock.
As users continue to join social networking websites, expect these networks to become “one-stop shops” that provide a growing variety of public services and information. If you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. Don’t let your organization fall behind because it failed to adapt!
Integrate your website with social media networks: Using interactive tools, you can now “plug-in” your website to all social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). New information can be blasted out to all of them at once, removing the need to make individual, time-consuming profile updates.
Create professional e-newsletters: E-mail tools can help you manage a database of customers’ email addresses, create visually pleasing, colorful e-mails, and track how many people view the e-mails and visit the links mentioned in them.
In conclusion, Mike notes, “As a baby boomer, it can be hard to understand all of these new marketing opportunities presented through social networks. But I know one thing for sure: If I don’t, my competitors will!”
