On The Road—Eastern Edition

Marketing Lesson of The Week

► Seismic Shift Marketing

My closing keynote at Integrate 2022 was entitled “Seismic Marketing Shift: How To Profitably Attract, Nurture and Retain Your Audience”. It focused on the marketing reality that people around the world are living through a period of massive disruption and change.

Due to these dynamic times in which we live, people view political, governmental, social institutions and organizations as less trustworthy and effective. As a result, we’re more partisan and divided across a range of topics.

According to Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer, people turn to businesses to lead change and to get results.

The Seismic Marketing Shift explains the changes that we’ve experienced during the past few years as we move from web 2.0 towards web 3.0. As a result, the marketing playing field is changing.

What does this mean for you?
It provides opportunities for your business and marketing.

The Seismic Marketing Shift consists of 3 key elements:

1. Content Saturation

Back in 2014, Mark Schaefer dubbed the growing overload of information “Content Shock”. Since then, the amount of content and other forms of information across an ever-growing number of platforms, formats and devices continues to increase.

According to Domo’s “Data Never Sleeps 9.0”, the social media highlights include:

• Facebook Live receives 44 million views;
• Tiktok users watch 167 million videos;
• Snapchat users send 2 million videos;
• YouTube users stream 694,000 videos;
• Twitter users posted 575,000 tweets;
• Discord users send 668,000 messages;
• Facebook users share 240,000 photos;
• Slack users send 148,000 messages; and
• Instagram users share 65,000 photos.

And these numbers don’t include personal and work communications via text, email and other forms of document sharing.

But people don’t just consume content!

In one minute, 6 million people shop online. Amazon customers spend $283,000 while Instacart users spend just less than a quarter of that amount.

From a human perspective:
People need to find new ways to consume more information quicker and to accomplish repetitive and daily chores often with new technology.

Why?
They don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done.

For business, content overload translates to increased competition to attract audience attention. As a result, it costs more in terms of advertising, influencers and other expenses to get your marketing content and advertising to break through to reach your target customers.

Actionable Marketing Tips

• Answer all of your buyers’ questions and make them easy to find. Follow Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask, You Answer approach. Also, take a library approach to make your content more findable.
• Create and distribute non-promotional content on a regular basis. This builds a reader habit for your business’s information.

2. Marketing AI [aka: Artificial Intelligence]

While marketing AI sounds scary to many marketers, chances are that you’re already using it in your daily life without realizing it. For example, search and social media all run on some form of AI.

From a marketing perspective, you don’t need to understand how to program AI. Rather, the key to success is figuring out which technologies are most relevant and useful to add to your martech stack to eliminate functions that can be better performed by technology.

This doesn’t mean that you reduce the need for people. Instead you free up their time so that they can perform their jobs better by focusing on the tasks humans do better.

For example, a machine can transcribe a podcast or webinar faster than a person. But without human editing the output can be difficult to understand.

Actionable Marketing Tip

• Find areas where you can test using AI to improve your marketing on a small scale. Once you show success, expand your use of AI to other areas.

3. Voice-first

During the pandemic, people across age groups became digitally and voice savvy.

Why?
Because they needed to use these technologies to get groceries, visit doctors and stay connected with family and friends.

Once they started using these digital and voice technologies, they learned new ways to use them to make their lives easier.

Voice is a game changer for content, marketing and business!

Why?
Because voice is a natural way to communicate. We’ve been doing it since we were born.

According to Vixen Labs’s 2021 Global Voice Research (analyzed here):

• 1 in 5 people is a heavy voice user since they use it multiple times per day
• By contrast about 40% of people never use voice

Where does your audience use voice?
Everywhere!

They use a variety of voice-first devices and environments including:

• Voice assistants, smartphones,computers and tablets,
• Hearables and Internet of Things (IoT)
• Smart home,
• Smart entertainment,
• In-car functionality,
• Out-Of-Home (OOH), and
• New evolving formats.

In fact, your business may already be using voice-first functionality in terms of chatbots, IVAs (or interactive voice assistants) and/or video conferences.

From a marketing perspective:
Think in terms of what your voice users are actually asking and what they’re trying to achieve.

What does this mean for your business?
To succeed, meet your customers’ evolving priorities, needs and expectations. Beyond integrating new technologies and business processes, be available and findable via the device of their choice when and where they need you.

Or you risk losing them to competitors or close substitutes.

Morgantown Marketing Minute

► Breakfast at Zeke’s

Being New Yorkers, we headed out around 1:30pm on Saturday to get brunch at the highly recommended Zeke’s Breakfast & Bakes, which was a few blocks from our hotel. In New York, brunch hits its peak between 12:30pm and 2:00pm, so we thought that our timing was good.

When we arrived at Zeke’s, the sign on the counter read “Kitchen Closed”. We didn’t believe it since the restaurant was open until 3pm.

Unfortunately, Aaron, the cashier, confirmed that our options were coffee and a blueberry pastry.

Why?
Because Morgantown, home of West Virginia University, is a college town, the student body makes up at least half its population. Since most of the students were gone at least until the start of summer school, Zeke’s anticipated a lower number of brunch customers.

While we were disappointed, it was a smart business decision. Their regular customers knew to arrive around 9:00 to 10:00am to get served.

Zeke’s staff was friendly and helpful. While they offered us a few nearby lunch suggestions, we opted for the last pastry and coffee.

Since they were good, we found out what time we had to arrive on Sunday to get the best Zeke’s had to offer.

On Sunday, I had a biscuit with egg, cheddar cheese and avocado, something I couldn’t get in New York City, and my husband had a homemade bagel with freshly smoked salmon.

With a couple of bites, we knew why Zeke’s ran out of food on Saturday. While we were there, a steady stream of customers continued to arrive. Some ate at one of the empty tables and others took brown paper bags filled with breakfast goodies.

Of course, had we consulted Google earlier, we would have known to change our timing for breakfast on Sunday.

Actionable Marketing Tip

• Figure out what your customers want and offer them the best quality product you can with great service. As a local business in a small town, Zeke’s succeeds by serving great breakfast food in a friendly environment.

Marketing Reads

► 10 Dad-Tested Content Marketing Secrets To Make You A  Better Marketer

Since Father’s Day is a week away, make sure that you’ve got your content and promotional calendar covered.

The truth is I learned about content from my dad who ran a local New York City newspaper. And I’m sharing his knowledge with you! 

► 100+ Free Summer Content Titles To Make You Look Good No Inspiration Required

Now is a good time to get a jump on your summer content marketing regardless of which content format you choose and what platform you publish it on.

Even if you don’t use a specific title format, it will get your creative juices thinking about better options tailored to your audience and business. As a bonus, some of these titles will inspire you to develop content that extends beyond the summer season. 

This article shows how to streamline your content creation process.

Marketing Training

►  How To Be A Content Entrepreneur?

                                                          [Affiliate Offer]

► Personal Branding Masterclass

Create your powerful personal brand with expert Mark W. Schaefer

August 2nd through August 18th, 2022

Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar

► Content Strategy Collective Live – June 8-9th.

Organized by MarketMuse, it will explore the strategies that content marketers and SEOs use to succeed.

► Omnichannel X 2022 Conference – June 13-16th, (Virtual).

► VOICE Global – June 15-16th,  (Virtual).

Join Voice enthusiasts around the world for 24 hours of insights and interviews about the fast-growing Conversational AI market. It’s free!   Register Here 

► MAICON 2022 – August 3-5th, 2022 in Cleveland, OH

The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON), returns to an in-person event this year. Check out MAICON’s schedule of upcoming webinars.

♦ ♦   Special AMG reader discount: Get $150 off — Use code: AMG150   ♦ ♦