Think about the feet.
Getting back to the basics of marketing
In 1998, two civil engineering firms set out to usher the city of London into the new Millennium. Their goal was to marry architecture, sculpture and modern engineering to create a bridge that would span the River Thames. This pedestrian-only causeway would stretch nearly 500 feet in length and was to be considered a major attraction for both tourists and locals alike as well as a marquee highlight for Millennium New Years celebration.
Fast-forward two years, lighten your wallet by about 30 Million dollars and you would see before you complete work of art. The bridge officially opened on June 10, 2000 to riotous fanfare as 90,000 people made the crossing on the first day alone. Amongst the cheers of walkers and those on the ferry’s beneath, an odd phenomenon began to happen.
The bridge began to bounce.
Initially dispelled, the problem began to arouse concern and safety officials began limiting traffic across, creating long queues as tourists eagerly awaited this white-knuckle experience. The cause for the wobble? Feet. The synchronous motion of walkers began to resonate through the bridges structure, eventually amplifying and causing a noticeable bouncing effect.
The engineers of the footbridge forgot to think about the feet.
Thoroughly embarrassed, the Millennium Bridge Trust closed the bridge and hastily began repairs. After two more years of research and an additional 7 Million dollars, the bridge was reopened to the public in February of 2002.
What does this tell us? Even in an era of modern technology and access to information, there is no fallback for poor planning.
From the perspective of marketing on the web, this is now different.
From banner ads to newsletters, we are bombarded with offers, trials, freebies and other various promotions around every corner of the web. This carpet-bomb effect has become an unfortunately comfortable tactic in the no-holds-barred playground of the Internet. The biggest mistake is adopting the mantra that more is always better; push mass products to mass audiences through mass media.
The problem is, consumers have become wise to these blitzkrieg tactics. We are trained to tune out anything lacking personal relevance and focus only on the items we know we want.
It’s time to remember the feet.
Instead of falling into the habits of the big push, consider stepping back and asking yourself a few basic questions.
What am I selling? This may sound like an obvious question, but it is often the most essential step in building a successful marketing campaign. Passionate knowledge of your product/service allows you to better understand its strengths and potential threats within your market. It can also help uncover hidden opportunities to grow and outpace any competition. In personal experience, I have discovered a shocking number of individuals who barely knew what they were selling.
Who am I selling it to? Oh yes. Consumer Insight. Now that you know what you’re selling, it’s time to determine the best consumer niche to market it to. This effort is the single most important aspect to an effective rollout. When marketing on the web, it’s very easy for communications to be lost, inaccurately targeted, or simply blocked due to lack of consumer insight.
Do people want to buy it? Consider this section the performance metrics portion of your marketing campaign. It’s at this point you step back and begin to analyze your effort. Consider this your post-mortem. Successfull or not, your next effort will have an affect on your next strategy. It only makes sense to capitalize on your windfall decisions and downplay any mistakes now doesn’t it?
Successfully selling on the web is no longer an all-out scramble to your customer-base. It’s now the calculated, more pragmatic approach that survives to sell another day. While it is hardly the tortoise in the race, we aren’t the ones tripping over our own feet.
Don’t forget to tie your shoes.
-Matt Backer
Tags: communications, functionality, trends
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Company, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
