SteveBuelow.com

I received the most intriguing voice-mail yesterday.

In it, the caller was making a case against the ineffectiveness of what he called “Mass Marketing”.

His point was that:

1) Mass Marketing is a waste of time
2) Mass Marketing is a waste of money
3) Mass Marketing doesn’t create personal relationships

Of course, he was right.

I would also add that Mass Marketing, as I define it, doesn’t create much of a relationship with your brand either!

Further, any attempt to market to everyone will undeniably water down your message and likely the quality of your product or service as well. One size… rarely fits all.

But that’s not what was so interesting to me.

No, what interested me was how the caller defined Mass Marketing. His definition described people who would seemingly use what he termed “Social Media” channels, spamming thousands in an effort to have a few people buy whatever product it was that their company was hawking.

You know, it’s the tired old idea about throwing enough mud on the wall.

Certainly, any such approach used online will continue to generate the same pathetic results as it always has offline – plus the added negative today of just plain ticking people off who hate spam!

NOTE: Ticking people off is a universally lousy Marketing Strategy 🙂

But the assertion that the Internet is just another broadcast channel is to miss its significance entirely. The Web, and especially mobile technology, is all about connecting with others just like ourselves… who value the same principles and with whom we share a common bond.

These threads wind their way through our lives and thoughts and relationships, and in business they become identifiers of our ideal market.

In other words, our niche.

And in our niche, it is all about the relationship, all about transparency, all about getting to know our customers and really letting them get to know us.

And, if they get to know us well enough, they may actually begin to like us and then to trust us. Heck, they may even fall in love with us!!

And, at that point it is completely possible that they may consider buying from us… imagine that.

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Oh, and one more thing.

This voice-message revealed to me how ingrained concepts can often stick with us even when they no longer make contextual sense.

Here is a individual who has been in the business world for decades, but who is still hanging on to a preconceived notion and applying it with force to a new and wonderful and freeing technology that has the potential to make the world a more humane and connected place.

And what’s more, this gentleman happens to be a leader within an organization that recently announced publicly their intention to target almost $500,000,000.00 to Big Media traditional branding and advertising campaigns of the sort that were popular at the height of the Merchandising and Advertising ages of long ago.

In other words, Mass Marketing…

C’est la vie.

Photo Credit:

dichohecho