How To Achieve Marketing Success In 2018

Right now, I want you to stop and think, if you’re old enough to recall – the joy of hearing “you’ve got mail”. How long ago was that for you when you think back that far? What else do you remember? Computers took overnight and well into the next day to defragment, and someone picking up the house phone while you were online meant you got disconnected from the internet in it’s infancy.

If you’re feeling wistful, it’s because that really was a long time ago. The world has come SO far from there that its nearly unrecognizable, and if you’d told the old version of ourselves what would still be to come, we’d have never believed it. Marketing has enjoyed the same sort of thing, the difference is that a handful of people had the good business sense to jump straight into this internet idea right away.

People are obsessed by shiny and new. If something is novel, anyone will buy it for a while and if one is very lucky it could become a trend, and make a very large sum of money before it fizzles out. If you are having trouble believing this, do recall the VERY successful story of ‘pet rocks‘ and you might reconsider. We just love the things that are new so much, that when people saw early websites offering a free newsletter, they were delighted!

Everyone loved the “you’ve got mail” that so many have heard of, and not just because it was once shiny and new, but because that time period, the birth of the internet… it has forever altered the world. Thinking back, a person can’t help but recall it fondly, and getting email was wonderful then. Now? It’s all people can do to get rid of the spam they’ve built up. Nobody wants to give their email address because they’ve either been scammed before, or hacked, or gotten a virus, or otherwise made to mistrust giving it. Getting one from someone these days as a marketer is extremely difficult. It often requires knowing the right people, or having a mentor in every sense of the word.

Back then, early marketers could build a list without having to try very hard, and anyone who helped them, or shared with them was able to do the same thing…for a while. Then it became a world dominated by those marketers who jumped on board early while it was new, and whoever they ended up sponsoring. Unless you became someone’s ‘golden boy’ it was tough going… and it’s only gotten harder.

What was once shiny and new, has become so overused by so many hoping for instant success, that it’s become old and boring. To really get people to sit up and pay attention in 2018, the most technologically advanced time of our lives… it’s going to take some really special things. These things aren’t new, but they seem to have fallen by the wayside for a long time. Most revolve around proving your humanity to people through things like passion, warmth and respect. When society grew to a point of no return, computers had to take many jobs previously done by people thanks to the huge amount of demand.

The internet opened up the world to each other. That created marketing opportunities never seen before.  Amazon and EBay are lucky winners from back then, for doing something new that nobody had ever heard of before. Coming up with something new today is much harder as well, but some things are always appreciated, if seldom seen. People work longer, harder hours these days, and most communication is digital in nature. Few people even have a landline phone in their home anymore. It’s not considered rude to have a full conversation never having uttered a single actual word, and only having communicated by text.

What people don’t do? They don’t take time for each other anymore, and customer service has suffered greatly. Everyone is in such a rush to get through the day, through the next customer, through whatever they’re doing to get to the next thing they must do that nobody has time to really care about each other during business. If you are able to provide this human element, so crucial, and so sought after no matter what time period you talk about… you win.

1. Quality over Quantity

People are tired of massive posts that are full of grammatical problems, and clearly written by someone who doesn’t speak their language, and also clearly stuffed full of keywords.

When people see this, they’ll click off the page to go somewhere else. When they find your site, you want them to have the desire to stay. This means giving them quality information, content, and sources which can be verified by clicking on the link within the article – which will go to a site considered widely, and worldwide to be an authority on the subject.

It’s fine to cite pages which may have less popularity than say, Harvard Business School, just be sure the information you’re citing is true and came from somewhere reliable like a school, panel of scientists and scholars etc.

2. Be Flexible

Multitasking has never been more important. People are learning to work with ten tabs or more open on one screen, and another set on a different one, while juggling a variety of tasks any given day. This was never expected of every job in the past, only specific jobs would require this. People didn’t have to do so much in the same span of time, because computers made it instant. Now that things can be done faster, more is expected from the same hours every day.

You’ll need to be open to new ideas, and be flexible to changes as they occur. Because the world IS moving as fast as we’ve said, a change could come tonight, and then change again tomorrow. You’ll have to be ready to accept the change, and quickly find your way around it so it doesn’t impact you as much if at all.

This also enables you to accept new prospects you may not have considered before, by being open and flexible to “the new” you also enable more chances at success.

3. CARE!

Seriously, this one is so easy and so few do. We are all so busy, wrapped up in our own life and goings on that we tend to block out everyone else around us going about their own version of the same thing. When we do interact, it’s in a way so utterly devoid of humanity, and in a way meant to speed people through so they can leave. Nobody actually stops to ask you how your day is or how you are, and TRULY wants to know, and cares about the answer because it guides the next question.

Guess what? – Doing that will mean the world to someone. We’re all invisible these days, walking around like one of so many. It’s only when someone stops and takes notice of us that an opportunity to make someone’s day is born. Give a genuine smile to them, and you’ve probably got yourself a loyal customer. That’s all it takes anymore these days, because it’s gone away for the most part.

A little human compassion and kindness go a very long way. So does one single smile. If you doubt it’s power, wherever you go this week – smile at everyone you walk past. You’ll get a lot of smiles returned, probably awkwardly since nobody really does that these days, and some may have no idea what to do in return. That smile is a gift to the other person, you gave them a smile. Studies prove that smiling even when you’re not happy will make you happier.

Give it a try, see if even you don’t feel better for it!

4. Be Consistent

People want consistency these days also. It’s no longer enough to simply have quality content, it’s also a matter of giving it regularly to your customers.

You have to know how much time you have and how much of that time you can actually devote to your marketing efforts. You’ll want to make a map of your time spent every day and on what things. When you look back on a week’s worth of work you can get a decent average of how many free hours you’ll have to increase marketing efforts.

You also have to manage your funds to do this since many posts will warrant boosting if they do well.

So many people start out with marketing excited about the coming success, only to slow to the point of stopping…just shy of success. It takes patience and incredibly good time management. It also means commitment to doing it every day during the week, without fail. Since posts can be scheduled this isn’t terribly difficult.

Just make sure that whatever you sign on to do, you’ll be willing to do a year from now.

5. Stats, Stats, Stats

There is nothing more important than stats as a marketer right now. If you were marketing or advertising when SEO was still capable in any way of providing paid search results, you’ll know just how quickly the market can change. So many jobs come and go, adapt and change because the moguls like Google change important algorithms which require marketers to stay honest, genuine and to provide quality.

These algorithms change how you show up in searches, and how many visits your page will get organically, paid and otherwise. They change so frequently that you have to be able to adapt on a moment’s notice. Having a plan “b” is probably a good idea today.

Keep an eye on your stats and your analytics, they’re the most valuable tools you have in determining which areas need work and which areas you are doing well in. While doing this however… don’t forget to remember the human touch.

Selected images created with Freepik