“Don’t just advertise to me, talk to me.” That’s what our logistics manager said to me after cleaning out hundreds of spam e-mails from his inbox. Around 30 years old, he occupies the upper levels of the millennial generation and his comment got me thinking about the future Marketing. What I see coming is a generation, of what I’m calling, jaded consumers. For the digital generation that doesn’t know life without a smartphone, daily life includes being bombarded with animated web banners, salesy e-mails you didn’t sign up for and ads and product placements that work their way onto your pocket or purse through your phone. This upcoming generation has learned to manage a constant influx of information from a variety of sources and are wary of unknown links or QR codes (who knows where it goes or what it’ll do to your computer!?) With so much noise, and a consumer that’s largely learned to ignore any unsolicited blinking, flashing intrusion, how will you ever stand out and get your point across?
One way is to stop yelling at broad groups, and talk directly to individuals. Much easier said than done….how do you speak to individuals, on a global scale? How do you drive millions in sales by talking to your consumers one on one? Fortunately, the internet is here to help, and even better, many of its best and most helpful assets are completely free. Take something amazingly broad, like a web search. It may seem at first that this is as mass as you can get, it encompasses the ENTIRE web. However, the minute your consumer puts a word or two into that search box, everything becomes niche. Not only are they looking for headphones, but ones that are waterproof, and will work with their iPod touch. In a matter of seconds you’ve joined a very specific conversation, which gives you an opportunity to speak directly to this person and their specific needs. So don’t expect paid search advertising to go away any time soon. It can be amazingly effective, yet time consuming to set-up and manage. Spending resources on a good e-commerce manager can be an investment that pays for itself in no time.
So that takes care of the people who are looking for you…but how to you reach the people who aren’t? How do you find those customers who you have the perfect product for, but they just don’t know it exists? After all you can’t Google for something you don’t know about. And that’s where peer to peer marketing comes in, i.e your Facebook friends. Today, everyone has become a billboard. We all use products and services daily, and now we have more resources than ever to talk about them and broadcast our likes and dislikes. It’s much easier to ask a trusted friend for advice, or to post a simple status update, and have comments just show up with suggestions and solutions to your problem. Before making a purchase, consumers are talking about it with their friends, Stumbling across the web and perusing Pinterest boards, ignoring oodles of ads along the way.
So the real takeaway here, is to rise above the noise, you need to get out of it. Don’t yell louder, re-target more and become another blinking, flashing item to ignore; become a part of the conversation. Instead of being a big enigmatic brand that hides behind pretty pictures, let people in. Let them see your human side and be authentic. If you’re a reputable company, making quality products that people want, marketing should be as simple as just being the same space with your consumers. Not selling them stuff, but talking to them directly because that’s what they want, that’s what they trust and the resources are available right now to do just that. I predict that future marketing budgets will devote many more assets to maintaining good people and strategic communication, rather than costly campaigns. In the future you will need to be not just a company, but another person in someone’s network, approachable and credible. Being “liked” in the Facebook sense will be important, but not as important as being liked as an overall company. We’re entering a time when it won’t just be enough to be a company, brand or service. You’ve got to be a company, brand or service that someone wants to talk about, be a part of and add them to the space where their friends and family live. Respect that space and do an honest and authentic job of explaining to your consumer how your products or services will help them out and you’ll have no issue rising above the noise towards success.
A recent survey found that more than 60% of college students and young professionals believe they should have the right to work from home on a flexible schedule. Cisco conducted the study of 2,800 young adults worldwide, and it’s worth noting that those 60% believed a flexible working schedule was not just a hope, or a perk, it was a RIGHT. Even more interesting, about 70% of those surveyed thought that coming into the office regularly was unnecessary, but only a quarter said that working from home was more productive.
At first glance of the statistics above, my first thought it to turn into the kids-get-off-my-lawn old lady, darn lazy telecommuting kids! But, I run the intern program for our company and in getting to know a handful of college students semester after semester, a lot these kids aren’t lazy, they’re scared and worse yet, jaded. Many new college graduates are leaving school with thousands of dollars in debt, facing an unstable job market, where if you’re lucky enough to land a position, it likely won’t come with yearly “cost of living raises”, holiday bonuses or a pension plan. Many forecasts predict that these kids will most likely earn less than their parents, work well past 65 years old, never collect a social security check and change career paths multiple times. When you’re 20 years old, that future looks pretty bleak.
I recently went through the daunting process of moving. Aside from hauling all my worldly possessions upstairs to my new place, dealing with forwarding mail, setting up utilities and waiting through gaping “installation windows” (yea, I had nothing to do between 10am – 4pm…I’ll just wait for you cable dude…) is a total pain.
I’ve seen a few articles spring up lately discussing how social media is costing businesses big money each year in lost productivity. 
I was at a party last weekend and found myself talking to girl in her late twenties, who told me in all seriousness that once she finished her masters program she planned to “blog, do speaking appearances, write a book, you know, that kinda stuff, there’s a big market for it right now”. She made it seem like a job you could interview for and easily land. A few days later I received an e-mail at work from another late twenties-er who sent me a link to a 3 minute long, unedited interview on Youtube with the request to help the video “go viral”. There are hundreds, if not millions of mildly entertaining videos of pranks, cats and cute babies that only have a few hundred hits, what makes you think this dry video is going to go viral?
Yea, that’s right, I said it…there is something to learn from the 
No, I’m not talking about the punk band, however, they’re pretty darn cool too. What I’m talking about here is doing business face to face.
I’ll admit I found this article on 
I have my BA in Sociology, and generally any time I tell people, I get the same reaction, “I bet you’re not using your degree, huh?” To which my stock response is, “I feel I use it everyday”. Of course learning how groups of people interact is a valuable skill that can translate to almost any situation. It helps in figuring out office dynamics and gives great perspective for marketing.
As I pick up more Marketing and PR duties for H2O Audio, it’s so much simpler for me to figure out our audience, because I’m a part of it. I love the stuff we make, I had some of it before I even worked here, and now I can’t imagine never having the option to surf or swim with music. So when it comes time for me to write a press release or the next Facebook post, it’s much easier to be engaging, sound excited and be creative, because I really do think what we do it pretty darn cool.