Joe Pulizzi says “Kill Marketing”. Not a bad idea!

Traditional marketing efforts today consume revenue. What if there were a way to kill traditional marketing and replace it with marketing efforts that generate revenue… while still supporting the basic needs of selling

Following are random excerpts from the book Kill Marketing created by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, that tell you how to pull this off.

What if everything we currently kow about marketing is what is holding us back? Over the last two decades, we’ve watched the entire world change the way it buys and stays loyal to brands. But marketing departments are still operating in the same, campaign-centric, product-led operation that they have been following for 75 years. The most innovative companies around the world have achieved remarkable marketing results by fundamentally changing their approach. By creating value for customers through the use of owned media and the savvy use of content, their businesses have dramatically increased customer loyalty and revenue. Some of them have even taken it to the next step and developed a marketing function that actually pays for itself.

Random thoughts from Joe and Robert.

Owned media has grown beyond a simple marketing tactic, or even a marketing strategy. It is now a strategic business activity that marketers happen to perform. In order to make it profitable, we must restructure the priorities of marketing accordingly.

Today, if you had to choose between creating an audience and then directly selling to that audience, versus renting outside channels that you don’t control and don’t own, which would you choose? Of course, you’d go direct. It’s an incredibly easy decision to make, and yet most companies have been choosing to rent (paid media) year after year.

The strategic use of content will not only build audiences and drive the creation/retention of customers; it will do so at a profit

Here’s the trick—a company has to be willing to slow down its lead-nurturing process. It has to be willing to completely change its approach to sales and marketing. It has to move from building lead databases to building audiences.

A loyal audience can help save costs by helping to inform the company about what kinds of new products, or new features, the company may want to bring to market. This is a way to decrease research and development costs.

Traditional advertising, direct marketing, digital marketing, and even social media  are all transforming. And all of them point toward a landscape where brands go directly to consumers, rather than relying on the gatekeepers of traditional media to get there. The only thing that prevented this in the past was the difficulty of getting in front of an audience.

We started this book by wondering if we were asking the right question. What if it is, indeed, now a world where media isn’t advertising-supported. What if it’s a world where media is advertiser-created?

The Future of Marketing

Did we kill marketing? Is it dead yet? As you have no doubt guessed by now, despite the title of this book, Joe and I are unabashed fans of the practice of marketing. We don’t presume to want to end marketing—far from it. We want to see marketing change, expand, and evolve into the strategic center of tomorrow’s business mode.

In Joe’s introduction to this book, he said something extraordinarily important. He said:

Traditional advertising, direct marketing, digital marketing, and even social media are all transforming. And all of them point toward a landscape where brands go directly to consumers, rather than relying on the gatekeepers of traditional media to get there. The only thing that prevented this in the past was the difficulty of getting in front of an audience.

What’s the future of advertising?

The short answer is five words long: “make things worth talking about.” The longer answer is that the marketer now needs to be in charge of everything the company does.

—Seth Godin, author, speaker.

Creative energy will see a shift away from agencies and towards publishers and platforms. An increasing number of the brightest creative minds will abandon standalone agencies for creative divisions of media companies and tech companies.

–Spencer Baim,Chief Strategic Officer, Vice Media

We started this book by wondering if we were asking the right question. What if it is, indeed, now a world where media isn’t advertiser-supported?  What if it’s a world where media is advertiser-created?

If we’re wrong about everything in this book, and evolving marketing into a profit center isn’t actually a reality—it still makes sense to become more strategic about your owned media strategy even if only to get your arms around the cost of doing business in today’s digital world. Thinking strategically about the used of owned media doesn’t cost you any more.

Need a B2B copywriter with Content/Theme Imaging skills? Send an email to keithbates@kbates.com. I’d be happy to discuss my services.