" Future Shock " is a book written by Alvin Toffler in 1970 and which should be compulsory reading in the training of any marketing manager. In its pages Alvin Toffler anticipated some things that today are history –very recent history, but history–, and that in the early seventies were closer to science fiction than to predictive sociology.
In short, the book anticipated the shock that a succession of very significant changes, caused by technological advances, would produce in people in a very short time.
There is no need to explain too much list of tonga consumer email where we are today, with thousands of articles and hundreds of books published that try to explain how we are going to be able to digest, as a society and as individuals, this situation of permanent change in which there are things that go from being new to old and, finally, to useless, in a very short time.
And back to the beginning. And tomorrow again. And always forced to leave our comfort zone. Forced to overcome the professional insecurity that comes from anxiously wondering if we are really up to date. If something hasn't already been invented that will make our annual marketing plans obsolete in your case, or our professional qualifications in ours.
Am I exaggerating? If you have any responsibility in a marketing department, whether you are senior or junior, you know that I am not exaggerating at all. And if you are a colleague in the profession, neither.
As we say in the subtitle of the free ebook 8 Online Marketing Trends for 2017 that you should include in your plans : if you are a marketing manager and you bend down to tie your shoe, when you get up, something will have changed.
And Inbound Marketing has changed many things, both for marketing departments and for advertising agencies. It has been a true Shock of the Future that is already part of our present.
What are the fundamental changes that it has brought us? How has it influenced our online marketing strategies? What has it brought? What has been a real shock to the traditional way of understanding online marketing?
It has made us aware that our target audience is the one who rules . Our plans must be aimed at satisfying, not seducing.
We need to solve problems for our potential customers . Offer them direct solutions or ways to find them.
Talking about ourselves and the products or services we offer is only relevant in the final phase of a potential customer's purchasing decision.
It is much more profitable, in terms of advertising investment, to work to attract people for their own interest , than to try to force them to come to us.
Seeking to increase traffic to our website is not a marketing objective . It is only a marketing objective when we manage to get qualified traffic. Otherwise, these figures are misleading.
CPC investment can be significantly reduced and have much better results.
Technology and human talent must complement each other, never replace each other.
Technology is the best friend of marketing professionals . Its implementation in organizations and the expertise in its use to automate tasks and make time profitable are, increasingly, the element that will differentiate leading companies from the rest. We always like to make the comparison that today nobody would set up a national transport company using carts pulled by mules as vehicles. Isn't that an absurd idea? Are you absolutely certain that there are no carts in your department...? Isn't it unfair to compare the price of a cart and two mules with that of a trailer?
Well, as unfair or absurd as it may seem, metaphors aside, this is exactly what many professionals do when they give up on marketing automation because the tools are expensive. Of course, they are more expensive than continuing as usual. More expensive than doing nothing. But a car is not the same as a trailer.
However, there is one thing that has not changed and is unlikely to change: it is not about making a product or service known to a lot of people, but about the right people falling in love with that product or service . And this is what inbound marketing does very well. And how is that achieved? By being very clear that technology is a tool that facilitates decision-making for... people. And people's creativity continues to be the differential element between a successful or failed campaign.
