Marketing Matters is ending. It has been a privilege and pleasure to have shared with you marketing ideas, tactics and best practices for more than a decade.
While the comments section of each article I wrote never saw any activity, I maintained direct communications with many of you. There has been a fine group that took the time to discuss every edition. Thank you for all the support and (mostly) complimentary discussions.
Marketing, motivating someone to become a customer, client or to purchase a specific product, is experiencing dramatic change brought on by a forward shift in advertising, younger corporate management and expanding AI (Artificial Intelligence). If, however, you consider it took 34 years for QR codes to become commonplace, AI becoming the leading marketing tool will not likely take over all other messaging overnight.
Television did not eliminate marketing on radio. Cable did not eliminate marketing on television, streaming has not ended ads on cable. What is happening is that marketing messages are being compressed to one tenth of their previous lengths in many cases. Agencies specializing in short format (5 seconds) message delivery are producing messages for digital and broadcast.
Here is where you come in! With marketing trends changing as noted, “Durable Messages” are rarely being considered by many businesses - unless you begin the conversation.
If I leave all you loyal readers with one thing, let it be that you are a professional, bringing marketing and advertising strategies to your clients. While selling products might be fast and easy, the longevity of that type of business might not be as long as you desire.
I took a look at some of the comments I received over the years. Hopefully some of you had similar experiences. Jim, a distributor in Florida, referred to Marketing Matters as a “Money Maker.” He said that applying tactics covered in this column had significantly boosted his income. Vincent in New Jersey wrote that he shifted his approach to “Purpose Not Product”, he had read about in this column. Now he doesn't discuss price, but budget instead. Abe in Tennessee said addressing business organizations presenting short talks, as had been suggested in Marketing Matters, has worked well for him.
Elizabeth, right here in Ohio, and a very loyal reader and commenter, told me that several years ago she tried to sell her distributorship but found no interested buyers because her business was “selling promotional products” and anyone that wanted to have a website could be in the promotional products business. She revamped her business based in part on best practices outlined over the years in this column. With a few key corporate accounts, and a good deal of referrals from them and clients that now considered Elizabeth to be a promotional marketing media business, she sold her business on a 3-year profit sharing setup which included making introductions of the new owner. She was very satisfied with the deal.
Previous Marketing Matters articles will continue to be available on PromoJournal, and eventually they will be archived, so if you have interest in revisiting this column, this is your open invitation.
For all who approached me at industry events and introduced yourselves thanking PromoCorner and me for this column, those who kept regular correspondence commenting on current topics, and those that suggested topics that I should research and write about - THANK YOU ALL, it has been great!
Gregg Emmer managed Kaeser & Blair’s marketing, catalog publishing and vendor relations for more than 30 years. Prior to arriving at K&B in 1991 he owned and operated a graphic communication company featuring promotional products and full service printing. Today Emmer’s consulting work provides marketing, public relations and business planning consulting to a wide range of businesses including promotional industry suppliers, venture capital and market research companies. If you are interested in growing your business (or privately commenting on articles) contact Gregg at gregg.promopro@gmail.com.