Since I began here at Red Clay in 2007, there has been tremendous change in the marketing industry. At one point just a few years ago, there was a very stiff line drawn between what an advertising agency, a brand agency and a web agency does…and you don’t cross those lines for fear of having a hand removed.
Since then, we’ve seen the interactive world shift from just being “websites” and “that search engine stuff” to encompassing all areas of marketing. Billboards are now driven by video and QR codes; Word-of-Mouth Marketing has shifted to being in person and online through social channels; Social is the new search, but search isn’t dead. Things have changed a lot.
Unfortunately, many small to medium-sized businesses still see “interactive marketing” as the new frontier. In many college marketing classes, they may dedicate a chapter, if any, to interactive marketing. However, in reality, it’s really just modern marketing. It’s still about target marketing, the lifetime value of a customer, the new product curve, consumer behavior, return on investment, etc. Just because the tools have changed, the strategies have not. Instead of just direct mail, utilizing social, direct mail and email can still have a tremendous impact on a one-to-one marketing campaign once combined.
Email automation tools allow you to create dream campaigns in weeks that were so difficult to run in direct mail alone that it would take months just to plan. For those of you familiar with direct mail campaigns, remember how you used to wish you could segment content with out a lot of work, or without it costing an exorbitant amount of money. With email automation platforms and partners like Silverpop, this is standard functionality.
So, as we continue to see and read more about how the walls that separate multiple agencies (advertising, PR, interactive, etc.) are falling, it’s important to understand that it’s still marketing. Understanding what it takes to get a prospect to react to a print ad, website or email is what it’s about. The more we as marketers and agencies understand that it’s about the return for the client and not just the creative or the idea, the more apt we will be, and our clients will be, to succeed.
