Here’s a quick summary of America’s marketing landscape – Shorter attention span, craving stimulation more than ever before, continually moving towards tribalism and division, privacy is a concern, increased isolationism.
But it hasn’t always been this way. Before the recent shift in marketing and technology, broad reach advertising was effective.
Marketing was a battle of creativity and long-term brand moves.
You could buy a space in the phone book, rent a billboard and make sure your team and offerings were on-brand, and often it would work!
Just like how radio changed marketing, and then TV changed marketing, the rise of the internet, social media, smartphones and apps have been directly connected to consumer behavior turning more digital, sporadic, and stimulation-oriented.
Now it’s not a question of how creative or “on-brand” is my ad. It’s a question of who is going to pay attention? Who is going to take time out of their highly stimulated life to listen?
Industry trends
- Attention spans are getting shorter, and more time is being spent in front of screens.
- Gen Z trusts influencers more than traditional celebrities.
- Large brands and small businesses are choosing to partner with influencers to promote their products.
- Online video consumption is through the roof.
There is increasingly more attention online, more competition online, and more consumption of online content than ever before. For a small business 5-10 years ago you only needed a website and digital marketing to drive quality leads.
But now because more businesses are investing in marketing online, a website, and a value-add digital marketing strategy are needed to stay relevant. Value-add means giving them something that makes their life better. Whether that looks like humor, inspiration, guidance, education or entertainment, marketing is about content that does something for people, not for the brand producing the content.
Questions digital marketing companies should be asking
- How does this marketing strategy give value to people?
- Are we marketing quickly enough, failing fast enough, and improving enough?
- Are we really listening to how people are responding?
Changing Industry needs
- Necessity of more content, relevant content, and on-brand content
- Website scalability
- Attention
- Narrative and storytelling
- Strategy
- Adding value to tribes
Marketing Examples
Problem: An influencer needed a rebrand and to make more money so he could continue to be an influencer full time. His audience felt the value in what he did, but he needed help growing his audience and offering better value-add products and services.
Solution: A rebrand of his influencer brand and a story-based ecommerce website that sold value-add content to his followers.
Problem: A multinational company had merged with and acquired other organizations and their global brand was represented in multiple different websites from the old companies.
Solution: A multilingual storytelling website was put in place to replace all the other websites which means their brand is more united and people can go to a centralized location for content and unified messaging.
Problem: A local electrician desired to take more market share from the larger companies that had stronger marketing and online presence in his immediate area. This made work inefficient because their service area was too large and company-wide drive time was through the roof.
Solution: A local SEO storytelling campaign was implemented to drive local leads. The business became more efficient and manageable.
Marketing moving forward
There is tribalism at a mass scale and as the world expands with technology it is infinitely shrinking. Marketing is now more honest, vulnerable, and community-inspired than ever before. Brands that adopt the humble, fail-fast approach will win.
Marketing today is about fast iterations of listening, strategizing, and launching content over and over again.
Here’s Fire & Hammer’s marketing process:
In today’s world of business, it’s a battle for attention. Brands can connect with consumers in a way like never before.
Marketing is becoming closer and closer to the consumer. The brands that are the closest to consumers will win.