It’s very easy to believe that you absolutely know how, when and where best to reach your customers and prospects with your marketing messages. Especially after many years of experience with a specific marketplace, you can easily fall into the trap of assumptions and generally accepted truths.
I’ve encountered numerous clients and corporate colleagues who fell into this trap:
“We don’t need a website. Our customers don’t go online.”
“Why would we send an email when we can send a fax or mail a postcard? Most of our clients don’t have email.”
“We don’t need an eCommerce site because people in our industry don’t shop online.”
“We don’t need to be on Facebook because that’s for kids.”
“Twitter? Is that real? Never heard of it. None of our consumers would ever use that.”
Change can be unsettling and frightening. It seems that a new technology pops up every week and it’s a lot of work to figure out how or why to understand its potential marketing opportunities. It takes a lot less effort to dismiss the new and different, and claim to understand the needs, motivations and behaviors of the marketplace, consumers, clients and prospects. It’s easy to market to yourself.
If I don’t shop online, then my customers must not do it either.
If I’ve never used Twitter, then it must not be an important marketing tool.
My kids use Facebook and I don’t sell kid stuff, so Facebook is not important for my business.
It takes a lot more work to do the research, conduct interviews, read reports, look at graphs, participate in meetings, conferences, panel discussions and other conversations to stay on top of the changes happening in your business and in your marketplace.
You’re not marketing to yourself.
You’re marketing to your customers and your prospects. You need to figure out how best to market to them, and that takes a lot of effort and a lot of testing.
If it was supposed to be easy, then you wouldn’t get paid to do it.
