Clay Posey Marketing Fusion

Just in case you’ve had your head in the sand, the whole world of marketing changed when no one was looking. I’m on the tail end of the boomer generation, so let’s look at marketing from when I was a kid.

TV.  We had three channels in my market (2,5,& 11).  If the weather was just right we could get a couple of more but it didn’t matter because they were the same networks as 2, 5, & 11.  Change the channel?  Get up and walk across the room and “clunk, clunk, clunk” turn the dial.  We were a captive audience for P&G, Coca Cola, Kellogs, and Pilsbury.   No point in changing the channels because there was a different commercial on the other channel at the same time.  Mass Media was in it’s heyday.

The Sunday paper was THE news source, besides the 6:00 news on 2, 5, & 11.

Then a guy named Ted Turner and a few others created a brand new world of cable TV.  Now you had 111 channels, news all the time and a technological break though – THE REMOTE!  Commercial comes on – you have 110 options to get away from it, all from the comfort of your recliner.  Mass media suddenly got a terminal illness.

Next disease, this little box called TIVO.  Now no one watches the commercials except Super Bowl fans and marketing geeks. So how to reach an audience?

Phone?  Nope – caller I.D and a national DO NOT CALL list and voice mail means that is a marketing fail!

Newspaper? Nope – we get our news from our Blackberries, internet, and cable (TIVO style)

Direct Mail? Nope  – it usually lands in the recycle bin.

Email? SPAM filter

Yellow pages? Really?  My friend @RonArden said it best on twitter yesterday “The new yellow pages are here!  I needed a new prop for my broken chair leg.”

The problem with all of these tactics is that they interrupt your potential client’s day.  That makes YOU an interruption, NOT a solution.  What a huge marketing fail that is!

The solution? INBOUND MARKETING!  Inbound marketing can be summed up in three simple phrases:

GET FOUND

CONVERT

ANALYZE & REPEAT

How elegantly simple.  And profound.  People are out there who need what you are selling – that’s why you’re still in business.  Inbound puts you and your potential customer together – painlessly for the customer and at a lower cost than you can possibly imagine.

Over the next several posts, we’ll unpack those three phrases and start to transform your marketing plan and your business.