Did you watch Mad Men? It was a hit back in 2008, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t actually watch it until the PTSD-triggering-lockdown of 2020. If I’m really honest, I didn't even make it past season three, but that’s not the point.
The point is, as nice as his suits were, Don Draper was proper awful. He reeked of toxic masculinity, and today, in 2022 his advertising strategies wouldn’t cut the mustard.
His strategies, like his personal life, were all about take, take, take.
We’re talking push and pull, and why push - otherwise known as outbound marketing, is outdated in today’s digital landscape.
I used to put all of my energy into push tactics, it's what I learnt from my directors in previous roles. They’d come from the old school mentality of big billboards and expensive TV ads, and they all adopted the backwards, classic - ‘we’ve always done it this way’ approach.
Don’t get me wrong, if you work in consumer marketing, you’ll still need to have a good chunk of push tactics in your arsenal, it’s not one or the other, but you also need to start thinking about ways to pull and attract your consumers.
Pull tactics are filed under inbound marketing, and with Google announcing the helpful content update this month, inbound marketing is more relevant than ever.
Nobody likes to be interrupted!
Channel 4’s streaming service All 4 has the absolute worst advertising, it’s pretty much unwatchable at this point. I just want to binge Below Deck in peace, without a break every 10 minutes showing the same annoying adverts as the last. When you’re six episodes deep into binge-and-chill it’s really painful. Thankfully I leech off my Sister In-Law’s Hayu, thanks Catherine. 🙏
Side note - I still call it 4oD tbh, as do the majority of millennials - what a terrible rebrand!
And I can’t actually believe there are still people out there sending junk mail, making cold calls, and shooting a LinkedIn connection a non-personalised message in a matter of seconds after accepting a request (surely that conversion rate is about 0.0023%).
It's all about your audience!
Great content is centred around the hero - your ideal customer and buyer personas. A lot of marketers make the mistake of making the conversation all about them and not their audience. In contrast to the awful cold call attempts I mentioned above, Inbound is all about starting the conversation without selling, the aim is to be helpful and share advice that people are actively seeking. They come to you and that’s the attract/ pull effect.
Whether you work in consumer marketing, business-to-business, or for a different agency, you’ve chosen to sign up to this newsletter for a number of reasons - entertainment, corporate espionage, or a bit of helpful advice (hey, maybe it’s even all three). Somehow we’ve managed to pull you in anyway, and that’s inbound.
Living in a material digital world
Back in the misogynistic, deceitful world of 1950’s advertising, as long as you had the cash, it was easy to get in front of people with your brand. When TV ads debuted in the UK in 1955, the majority of people still only had one channel, if they wanted to watch the box, they had no option but to sit through your ads.
Digital advertising is crashing hard!99% of Gen Zhit skip on an ad given the option, and 63% actively use ad blockers to avoid them all together. Google is phasing outthird-party cookies in Chrome by 2024, and Apple cracked down on advertisers and app developers tracking users with the iOS 14 update last year.
It's time to shift your weight from paid into organic and get behind content marketing
If someone needs to; answer a question, seek advice, solve a problem, or find something new, chances are they’ll head straight to: Google, Youtube, Reddit, Instagram or TikTok. Make sure your brand is showing up!
Here's what you need to do:
Work out the problems your customer needs to solve
Ensure your content is super helpful and informative
Create content for every step of the buyer’s journey
Be active in the channels your customers are active in
Avoid jargon, cut the fluff, and don’t speak like a robot
Make sure your content is always authentic and relevant to your brand
Repurpose your content - e.g. turn a blog into: an e-book, video script, social posts…
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