With the growing momentum for marketing automation and tech tools, is the digital marketing community losing track of the "steak" while being blinded by the "sizzle?"
Following is an awesome post that reminds us that there's a reason why that perfect, on-target creative concept is called the "Big Idea." And automation will never be able to generate it.
It used to be so simple: create a compelling message, design equally compelling creative around it, push it out into the marketplace, then watch the sales roll in. (okay, maybe not that simple, but you get the idea)
No more.
Due to the rise of cloud-based computing and the resulting mountains of data now available at our fingertips, marketing is in the midst of a sea-change that has revolutionized the industry. It's now possible to: identify and segment a target audience, connect and engage, deliver content, gather feedback data, identify insights, and iterate to better optimize original content (phew!)—all at speeds never before dreamed possible.
We're talking hours, not weeks or months. Test, iterate, test again, iterate again. Until connections are made, bonds are formed, conversions are achieved, and advocates are born.
Simple. Catch this wave, or risk drowning in its wake. I'm talking Davy Jones' Locker here.
Many in the business community consider professional graphic design a luxury and not the mission-critical element it truly is.
Big mistake.
Here’s a great post explaining why.
If you asked twenty people to define marketing, you may get twenty distinctly different answers. The following post, in the form of a young son’s question to his father, explains marketing in its most distilled manner.
A must read if you’ve ever been asked, “what is marketing?”
Despite its use of SEO strategies and the way that SEO tends to overlap with it, inbound marketing is not a synonym for search engine optimization. SEO's main focus is on the search engines and how and where your site appears in their listings.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is about being found on the channels your most valuable customers engage in most. You want to use those channels to provide valuable content to your targeted audiences.
Through inbound marketing strategies, you will take your industry knowledge and use it to entertain your customers, solve their problems, or make their lives easier or better in some way.
You want your customers to hear what you’re saying. But getting their attention can prove tricky for a whole range or reasons… That’s where graphic design—professional graphic design—can help.
