The Tale of Liberated Marketing
Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, marketing, advertising, and brand were considered the same thing.
That’s because companies like Coca Cola, Nike, and Budweiser were the only ones who had the budget to make these things happen. They hire prestigious New York-based advertising firms and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars to create logos and taglines, commercials and campaigns.
In those days, when advertising and marketing were thought to be the same, the biggest win was a multi-million dollar ad during the Super Bowl. The biggest loss was thousands of dollars spent on advertisements that never were seen.
And in those days, The only people who could be marketers were the people with money.
The Internet changes everything.
Marketing tools are accessible to everyone.
So the glut begins.
Now every company, and possibly every individual, has the opportunity to step into the marketing space. No one had a “personal brand” 30 years ago. Follows, likes, and subscribes were not a thing.
The differentiation between brand, advertising, and marketing is now important. And they are accessible to all.
Brand is how you present yourself to the world.
Advertising is how you promote yourself to the world.
Marketing is the strategy behind it all.
The strategy in the old days was to get your brand in front of all the people.
The strategy in the era of liberated marketing is to get your brand in front of the right people.
We need to lose the idea behind the glitz and glamour of the big marketing campaign. Bigger is not always better. Not in this new era. There’s too much noise. Unless you have the buying power behind a big brand like Nike or Coke, you and I will never break that sound barrier.
An email list of 500 of the right people — people who love what you do and are engaged — is better than an email list of 25,000 people who don’t care. You’re more noise in their inbox. (I had a client who proved this.)
In the era of marketing liberation, we must be careful to not think as they did in the old days of "advertising = marketing." While it’s available to all, marketing now requires more finesse and strategy than it did in the days before democratization.
For this who don’t know, and to be clear, I’ve started an education and consulting business. I am a franchisee of Growability™.
I help business and non-profit leaders grow their organizations by providing training and tools for leadership, management, and marketing.
Would love to chat if you want to know more.
