Customer Trends

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The classic PR model assumed that there were well-read and well-respected journalists with a loyal audience. When traditional PR was at its peak, journalists were one of the main links to potential customers. Now potential customers can talk directly to each other. And that has changed the game forever.

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I spent two days last week at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, put on by Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.

There were some great speakers, and a number of vendors specializing in the Social Media/Web2.0/Marketing2.0/Video Marketing/InboundMarketing space. I thought it might be helpful to list these resources, in case it helps you with your own current revenue-growth efforts. I'll start with a couple of "big picture" takeaways: 

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If the business world were a neighborhood, marketers would be the ones with the nice house and a manicured garden. They would be social, but in a well-dressed, somewhat formal kind of way. Marketers are, on the whole, somewhat reserved. Their job is to show the good sides of a company, and control the "messaging" associated with the company. The public face.

It was pretty easy to control that message back in the stone age of traditional one-way marketing, before the web. It was even pretty easy to control that message after the web and email marketing settled in. If marketing was a party, the party was still dignified and respectable.

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Here I am again, a buyer. Money in hand. Ready. Eager. Wanting to get what I need, fast, and go back to work. What do I want to buy? International wireless broadband, using a data SIM card that I can plug into a variety of cellular devices and work, on land and at sea. I want to get the right solution, but I also have deadlines - so I don't want to spend a lot of time on this.

Clue #1. Your buyer is BUSY. She is NOT sipping a cup of Java with her feet up, watching your fancy demo. She wants to buy what she needs, now.

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I'm beginning to wonder what all the professional liars are going to do for a living.

I'm starting to see things go really badly for a whole group of people, people who were too lazy to learn something complicated, but who were smart enough to talk their way into and out of just about anything. These people are dead weight now.