It’s time for another book discussion. This time, I’m reading Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? by Seth Godin. The general idea is that not all organizations are optimized to take advantage of the new marketing opportunities out there today. Instead many companies are still focused on old marketing techniques. Godin discusses 14 trends that have re-shaped marketing, and illustrates how you can optimize your business to take advantage of these trends. Since the organization of the book is a bit different (and you really should read it yourself), I won’t be discussing the book chapter by chapter. Instead, I’m going to discuss each of his 14 trends in turn.

Let’s start the discussion by defining old marketing vs new marketing. Godin describes the era before advertising as a time when small and local businesses thrived. Products were usually made by hand, and sold locally. Many of these companies failed to invest properly in marketing to the masses and therefore died out when the advertising age hit. The era of advertising is what really describes “old marketing”. Godin define’s old marketing as “the art of interrupting masses of people with ads about average products.” (reminds me of those old toy commercials when I was a kid) Many companies are optimized to take advantage of this approach. However, we are in the era of “new marketing”, and many companies aren’t set up to take advantage.

“New Marketing” Godin says, “leverages scarce attention and creates interactions among communities with similar interests. New marketing treats every interaction, product, service, and side effect as a form of media.” See the difference? Let’s break it down a bit. Old marketing relies on a limited number of media outlets (print, radio, television, etc); new marketing has unlimited media outlets. Old media is focused on appealing to masses; new marketing focuses on appealing to niche audiences. Old marketing is based on marketer-to-consumer communication; new marketing is based on consumer-to-consumer communication. Old marketing sells with features; new marketing sells with stories. The book outlines many more differences, but you get the idea.

Think about it for a few minutes. From the ground up, many companies are designed with this old marketing approach in mind. They create average products for the average consumer, and use mass media to let the world know. If this describes your approach to marketing, then you will not be able to take full advantage of all the new marketing opportunities available. I’ve talked about companies using social media poorly. Many times, it’s because they focus only on the new toys and not enough on organizational changes. If you want to take advantage of new marketing opportunities, you need to create outstanding products and then tell stories directly to the people that you’ve gained permission to talk to.

What do you think defines old marketing and new marketing? Do you agree that we are in a new era? Discuss in the comments or send me an email.

Next time we’ll discuss the first trend, “direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers”.

I’ve been talking alot about social media and online marketing. Why not? Everyone’s doing it now. Unfortunately many are doing a poor job at it. It’s not enough to just have a facebook fan page, twitter account, a youtube account, etc. You must create community, otherwise it’s a waste of time. So what if you post videos of satisfied customers, or announce a new promotion. It doesn’t matter if no one is looking at your content. I’ve visited many corporate social media sites, and many of them simply post commercials, promotions, and/or testimonials. Who cares really? I mean, the only reason I look is because I’m a marketer, and I’m interested in how companies are promoting themselves online. However, as a consumer, I don’t care.

I was going to post something about one of my favorite brands, but I think I’m going to go in a different direction, ‘cause I’m just evil like that. Let’s take a look at one of my “favorite” booksellers, Barnes and Noble. They do some decent marketing every now and then, but their youtube site is garbage. So what do they have on their youtube channel? Exactly what you’d expect, interviews with authors, and not much else. It’s no secret that Barnes and Noble is a huge brand, so I’d expect them to have tons of subscribers. As I write this, they have a total of 287 subscribers, and I’m wondering just how many of those subscribers are actually employed by the company. This is what happens when you post the most boring content known to mankind on your site.

So what should they be posting? Well, in this case, I think they could post some interesting employee interactions, video of excited fans meeting their literary heroes in the store, a review program where they get random customers’ opinions, book recommendations (if you enjoyed this bestseller, here’s some other lesser known books you may enjoy), people getting busted for shoplifting, whatever really. As long as it’s interesting. If the content is good, maybe they would have more subscribers, and might actually be on their way to creating community.

It’s not just a problem with the big boys, smaller companies are also guilty of this. If you’re not going to post good, creative content then you really are not taking full advantage of the social media tools available. I could go on and on, and will probably discuss this again in the future, but I just got a new batch of books from the library and am ready to dig in. The bottom line, just having an account with these social media sites is not enough, doing what everyone else is doing with these sites will not differentiate you. Create excellent content

What’s the difference between Barnes and Noble and Borders? Comment below or email me. You know the address.