Back when I was in college studying marketing, they showed us the marketing funnel. I’m not sure if they still teach this, but if you’ve studied You’ve probably seen it too. It’s basically a process where you start with a large number of prospects then proceed to a shorter number of qualified leads, then to customers, then to clients. This is the old way of doing things. In the past, marketers had no choice but to interrupt people and inform them about your company’s offerings… whether they were interested or not. The focus was on mass. Marketers needed to constantly fill that funnel with fresh prospects constantly. My how things have changed. Seth Godin discusses the shift away from mass (yet again) with his twelfth trend in Meatball Sundae, “the shift from how many to who”.

We’ve talked about it before, and we probably will again. Now is not the time to waste resources spamming people. Instead you should focus on exactly the people that are interested in what your company offers. Think of it like this. If the old approach to marketing was a hand grenade, then the new approach is like a phaser from Star Trek (or a laser for my readers that aren’t cool enough to watch Star Trek). It’s very focused on individuals not on random groups. These individuals, if targeted correctly will be your biggest fans and will go out and spread the word to others in the community. If you’ve segmented the market properly, finding these communities online should be a piece of cake.

Even if you have a product that appeals to a large group of people (say beer for example) it doesn’t mean you should spam random people. There are appropriate places for your message, and it’s your job as a marketer to find them. Maximize your resources (time and money) don’t waste them, marketing to an audience that doesn’t care or can’t afford you’re offerings.

The problem with a lot of online marketing is that many companies try to focus on using the new tools of the internet to focus on doing things the same old way. They look at things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and online ads to interrupt masses of people and spam them with their message. It just doesn’t work that way, no matter how much you want it to. Especially online, it’s very easy to click away and ignore your message. In order for me or any other consumer out there to be interested in what you are offering, it must be relevant to what I’m looking for at that instant.

Anyways, you get the point. Focus on individuals not on mass. Only two more trends to discuss!

Notables quote from this section:

• “Let’s be really clear: the web is the single worst medium ever devised for interrupting people who don’t want to be interrupted.”
• “Marketers who are in sync with this new tool realize that it won’t let you do the old thing better, what it will let you do is find people to spread the word for you.”