Here are some key trends I keep seeing:
CEOs are often avoiding the potential cost and time involved in building a network of web sites that could be a marketplace for their product.
CEOs give up in their efforts after one online failure. If the first go at building an online presence didn’t work out, they won’t invest in it again.
CEOs are still spending money on traditional advertising, despite growing facts suggesting it doesn’t work as well as it once did.
CEOs consider product and marketing separate, when the marketing should be the product. Marketing isn’t something you do after building your product — it’s something built into your product.
CEOs rarely document their sales success trends, and test different campaigns in a controlled way, to learn which method is more effective.
2 responses to “On Being Successful Online”
The internet is not the answer all to all marketing problems. I have worked for ten years as a Marketing & Advertising Director full-time and freelance Web Design after work in my free time. In my experience direct mail and advertising are the best ways to market for the two similar companies I have worked for in the past ten years.
So depending on your business or industry traditional marketing may in fact work better than any internet campaign, dollar for dollar.
The fact is traditional marketing has worked for hundreds of years. Sure I believe the internet is a great marketing device, but really it is not the answer to all marketing problems.
Chris, as always, insightful. Thank you for making me feel at least a little more sane.
Virgil, I would wholeheartedly agree that the Internet is not the answer to all marketing problems. (I have also heard that it is “not a big truck.” I hear it is “a series of tubes.”) However, your response (“the internet is a great marketing device”) lends credence to the very point Chris is making, further validating that–for many–the decisions surrounding online efforts are often befouled by offline-world platitudinous thought.
Yes, I used the word platitudinous. I didn’t mean to do it. It just slipped out of my mouth.