The Best Marketing Doesn’t Feel Like Marketing

The Best Marketing Doesn’t Feel Like Marketing:
Marketing at Porsche is designed to make sure Porsche is in places where consumers are consuming content.
Procter & Gamble’s marketing strategy here on in will focus on one-to-one relationships and meeting the needs of technology-dependent consumers.
Xbox marketing uses Twitter in a customer-support capacity to respond to more than 5,000 tweets per week with an average response time of single-digit minutes.

Smarter marketers are finding that the best marketing is designed to build relationships. Build relationships and sales will follow. More and more consumers are being turned off by companies that are focused on selling them something. Entire industries have been built around blocking your traditional advertising message because consumers feel they are intrusive and annoying. Smart marketers understand this and are changing their processes.
The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all. Consumers are buying from the brands that sell to them the least! Smarter marketers realize that increased access to information means it is being consumed at an unprecedented rate. To be successful, you must find the most relevant places to engage with your customers with the ultimate goal of making your web site and social media pages those destinations.
Traditional advertising and spray and pray marketing strategies don’t deliver measurable or predictable results. Businesses that have discovered this are growing exponentially without spending a single dollar on advertising. One example is Spanx, the leading brand in slimming undergarments. The business that started as a one-woman operation and with a $5,000 investment is now valued by Wall Street as a $1 billion dollar company and has never spent a dime on traditional advertising.
“We had to spend money only on things that make money and advertising was esoteric. You couldn’t really measure the return you were going to get so we didn’t do it. The power of women discovering the brand from other women was actually a better strategy.”
Spanx CEO, Ann Goldman
Smarter marketers have discovered that their job is not to sell their product as hard as possible, but rather to create experiences for their customers that make those customers want to talk about and share their product with potential customers. Traditional advertising doesn’t do this! Rather than push, push, push, marketers must provide opportunities for consumers to interact and engage with their brands.
Traditional advertising is a one-way communication. The best marketing feels more like a conversation, a relationship where consumers feel vested in a brand and are willing to advocate for it. Great marketing works itself naturally into your brand. That’s why the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all!