Do You Even Need A Marketing Dept?

// June 8th, 2008 // life

I have been embedded in the corporate marketing machine now for a while and have learned bits and pieces of traditional marketing along the way. However, my focus has always been on interactive marketing and digital stuff… It’s nothing new, but most companies (private, public, non-profit) thrive off referrals or word of mouth.

So am I really needed? As a marketing person, am I really needed? I hope so, but not in the way that most would think. My mind has been wrapped around ways of changing marketing strategies, ways to reach people when and how they want to be reached. I hate interruptive marketing, so why should I do it to others?

The trend recently has been to open up and let people see the real you or the real company that is trying to sell them something. My digital marketing bible has pretty much been David Meerman Scott’s book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”. This book is fully responsible for my “what’s next” thinking. I feel confident for commercial companies the next trend is a mix of permission based marketing and web 2.0 strategies. If you will indulge me, I’m going to try and put these thoughts into a few logical paragraphs.

Instead of myself or my company marketing to others- I want to build communities that my target demographics will use, some place they will go to for advice and for information. It will be in these communities that my satisfied clients will become my marketing team, they will sell it without even trying. It’s not a trick, but buyers are looking for unbiased information and they aren’t going to the corporate sites anymore- they are going to blogs and other places to find people like them who can be their guide. Why not create that place? It’s a fine line of community and business. It’s a line where the business can provide news and information but will do so when asked or when appropriate. Opening up the portals and getting your already satisfied clients will be the key, remember they are the new sales team.

You may say “Companies are already creating mini-communities, how is this different and how is it accomplished?”. It will vary from company to company, but the idea is to start a social media type site that allows this type of interaction. I think companies like Ning and Kickapps are great, but I don’t think another facebook or myspace is needed for this type of community. I would lean towards a multi-user blog format or build off a standard publishing model. Company is publisher/distributor – contributors are both company, clients, buyers, professionals or specialists.

Why will this work better? This allows the company to create a place for relative articles, news, event listings, featured vlogs or podcasts. This does two things… the company can create this place and setup the content and “brand” for the community allowing them some but seemingly minimal control. Secondly, adding and creating relative content to what the company is selling or trying to spread will get indexed by Google and will help others looking for that product find it… on their own.

Let’s take my indie label for example. I have a website- it looked good but was built completely wrong from an SEO standpoint. I joined Myspace and created a place for community for my artists and their fans. We’ve had the Myspace for a few years and we have a few hundred friends. First off, friends don’t equal fans, at least fans that buy music. Keeping up with Myspace has been a huge undertaking and not worth the payoff. So after realizing myspace and facebook are important individually to musicians and bands- the question is how to make the label benefit by finding new artists as well as increasing exposure for current ones.

What I’ve done is shifted the branding of Tone Box Records to Tone Box Digital. I’ve created a community that will be built around blogs, vlogs, relevant content and podcasts. So much more is accomplished with this type of site, it’s built for the independent artist in mind, not the ego of a record label. Yes, information about the label is still available if some one is looking for it, but the site will be found because fans are looking for their favorite indie artists or artists will stumble upon an article about the indie music scene. Two objectives, one site for both.

The new site is in beta right now and content is being added… but I thought it was a good example of what my mind has been planning/thinking. This wasn’t a blog about advertising my new label site, that will come later when it’s out of beta!

I know this type of marketing is accomplished everyday by individuals who have blogs and have opened their sites to users, however my thought process is really geared toward the companies who are behind the scenes and need an outlet into the web 2.0 world.

Thoughts?