Are You In or Are You Out? Reality Check On Your Marketing Activities

First, we want to thank everybody who sent us comments regarding our new blog. Almost 100% agreed on being challenged with finding new ways of reaching customers and clients. And almost all asked about how to find out, if they are still in the old Marketing world. That is why we decided to give you a reality check this week. You are still in the old mindset, if you believe the following:

- Marketing means advertising
- Advertising needs to reach out to the masses
- Advertising relies on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message
- Advertising is only one-way: company-to-consumer
- Advertising is about selling products
- Advertising is based on campaigns that have a limited life
- Creativity is the most important component to advertising
- Advertising and PR are separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals,
strategies, and measurement criteria – and they usually do not talk much to each other.

We all know that none of that is true anymore. The Web has transformed the rules. Please check, if you are (already) on the new track of reaching your customers and clients:

- Marketing is more than advertising
- Public Relations is for more than just a mainstream media audience
- You are what you publish
- Be authentic and avoid to spin
- Let people participate in your product, services etc.
- Deliver content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
- Reach vast numbers of underserved audiences via Web
- Marketing is about your company winning business, not about your agency winning awards
- You drive your customer into the purchasing process with great online content
- Blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases and other forms of online content let you communicate directly with buyers in a
form they appreciate

In an offline world, marketing and Public Relations are still separate departments with different people and different skill sets, but this is not the case on the Web. The lines between marketing and PR have blurred. It really does not matter, if a customer's first exposure to your product or service is a hit on the Web site, or a news release your organization sent, or a magazine article, or a post on your blog. Great content in all forms helps buyers see you, because content drives action.