I love marketing. It’s been over two decades, but nothing has changed my passion for marketing.
I Love Marketing – Competition Fuels My Passion
Competition is one of the most exhilarating elements that has kept my passion burning. I’ve always been driven by the challenge of staying ahead of competitors and doing things differently and doing different things to gain a first-mover advantage in attracting prospective customers to bite.
We wage a fierce digital marketing war everyday, create compelling content continuously, make massive numbers of calls, conduct exhaustive research, send emails, shell out thousands of marketing dollars and do everything possible to stay ahead of our competition. I love marketing simply because of the thrill of it. Showcasing innovative products and services in highly competitive marketplaces, providing air cover to Sales and generating high quality leads excites me.
In the Beginning, There Were Cold Calls
When I started out, direct mail marketing was perhaps the only way for disseminating information. It was up to companies to find customers. Fortunately cold calls were acceptable, and yielded decent outcomes. Then an unprecedented technology invasion in business shifted the marketing paradigm. Email revolutionized direct mail marketing. Campaigns became cheaper and faster to execute. In a flash, if you hadn’t hopped on the direct mail marketing bandwagon, you were probably left behind quickly.
Information Automation Saturation Innovation
SalesForce transformed how we kept in touch with customers and prospects. Marketing Automation revolutionized how we tracked our emails, scored and nurtured them, all the way through the funnel until a transaction. Getting the attention of prospects became an exercise in creativity. Email shrunk advertising slogans. It became vital to grab the potential customer’s attention in a few seconds, in 10 words or less.
Consequently, it became more challenging to elicit a read.
Progress – the Beginning of the End?
In retrospect, I realize that mass mailing marked the beginning of information overload. Technology has kept us better connected. Social media is now a popular way to keep prospects informed. We have multiple digital addresses, thanks to social media. You would imagine that all this has made it easier to find customers.
Think again. Being more accessible has redefined the rules of establishing contact with prospective customers. Cold calls and emails are seen as personal space intrusions. Aggressive in-your-face marketing has become a big turn off. In fact, the whole concept of businesses looking for customers has become passé.
The tables have turned, with customers looking for products and services when they want it. And so, now it falls upon businesses to put out their value proposition so attractively that they get seen by customers.
Marketing has been evolving dramatically over the years and successful marketing organizations adapt to customer needs even as they explore the latest technologies and software to hit the marketing landscape.
Marketing is a perfect mix of art, technology and media. This media mix fuels both of my hemispheres – I love marketing as it brings out my creative side, my love for storytelling, my geeky nature and my intuitive media persona – all at once.
