This week, myself and a couple of associates started to work on a rather large program for a client we had not done any work for in about 2 years. The reason for this lapse was that the client, who is a very good B-to-B marketer, shifted his focus pretty exclusively to digital marketing. He had always kept his website work separate from his overall branding, advertising, and direct marketing. And, though we were never really told as much, the evidence pointed to a decision to put all his eggs in a digital basket.
We followed the progress of this decision and for about a year and, it looked like it was a good move to make. But then, a strange thing happened. His sales started to flatten out. Nothing earthshakingly serious, but to an aggressive marketer and market leader, it sent up a definite red flag.
Eggs And Baskets
Putting all your eggs in one basket, especially a digital basket, in today’s world, is a relatively high-risk venture. This is especially true if your target audience is one that still values conventional media as a primary source of product and industry information.
Digital media in all but a few of its various forms, is still, despite what most digital marketers tell you, a shotgun approach. This is more a function of the nature of the Internet than anything else. But it is what it is.
As digital media grows and new ideas come along to help sharpen its focus, it may become less of a shotgun. But, in my opinion, it will be quite some time before it’s anywhere near as effective at reaching any specific industrial target audience as focused trade media advertising, direct mail, and trade show participation.
The Learning
Anyone who is not a blithering idiot understands that a presence in digital media is a given in today’s world. But in order to truly be doing things right for your business, it’s critically important to understand and respect the level of influence that conventional media still exerts on your core and secondary target audiences.
The target audience of the client I am referring to in this post is predominantly in the industrial trades, i.e. business owners and managers who are, by and large, very hands-on in their business, and whose media preferences are fairly balanced between digital and conventional.
If you lose touch with them in either of these media, it will adversely impact your sales.
That is what happened here. And the purpose of what we are doing for this client is pretty much a game of catch-up.
Hopefully, when we get caught up, sales will be back to their normal rate of growth and the client will actually have gleaned some pretty good learning about eggs and baskets.
