You've Come A Long Way, Baby

It's incredible how fast things change. Do you remember that slogan? “You've Come A Long Way, Baby.”

That phrase was used in an advertising campaign for Virginia Slims, a brand of cigarettes marketed specifically to women. The slogan was introduced in 1968, and cigarette ads were banned in 1971. It lasted only three years but was so successful that it's still remembered and used today in cultural references.

The 1980s were quite a decade. We saw the rise of MTV, the Sony Walkman helped music become portable, and Nintendo and Atari turned our TVs into video game consoles. And let us not forget Blockbuster and renting movies on VHS and Beta.

Marketing, on the other hand, was done on TV and Radio, in newspapers and magazines, through mail and the Yellow Pages, and we kept our business connections in a rolodex or an address book.

Skip ahead to the 2010s (yes, that was 14 years ago), and the Walkman was replaced by the iPod. Video gaming could be done on your phone or computer, and we could now binge-watch shows on demand.

Marketing was all about websites, Google search, Google Business, SEO, and Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn jumped into the ads game. Our business connections were now online or in a local spreadsheet, CRM, or accounting/ERP database.

In the first four years of the 2020s, technology has not changed much except that it has become cheaper, faster, and more powerful. But when it comes to marketing, the game has completely changed.

Today, I want to discuss the three things we must pay the most attention to and how you can increase your ability to break through the marketing morass and noise.

“Just (Don't) Do It!”

The days of the Wild West of marketing have now been (and will continue to be) met with laws and regulations. You may or may not be familiar with GDPR, CCPA, and various state-level privacy laws, which have made data collection and usage more complex.

You can't add people to your email lists, sell their data, or pester them without their explicit consent, and you must provide options for data access and deletion. Email companies will shut you down if you try to add paid-for lists of prospects. They do this because they don't want the FTC to shut them down. These regulations require significant changes to marketing strategies and technologies.

The Remedy:

Your job is to entice people to provide you with their information. That can be through becoming a customer or prospect. It also makes a case for getting people to your website and getting them to fill out a form to download something or watch a gated piece of content.

The thing is that you need to make it clear what you will do with the information. The simplest way is to add a non-legalese privacy policy. Here is an AI Example:

Privacy Policy: At [Your Company Name], we value your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. We will use your information to inform you about our company, including updates, promotions, and relevant news. Rest assured, we will never sell, rent, or share your information with third parties for marketing purposes or any other reason without your explicit consent. Your trust is important to us, and we are dedicated to ensuring that your data is handled responsibly and securely.

Put that at the bottom of your emails. Make it clear to your most valuable source that relationships are open, honest, and transparent.

“You're Not You When You're Hungry”

Hangry? Betty White showed us that if you simply eat a Snickers Bar, you become yourself again. In reverse, standing in the checkout lane may make you hungry, but then you see the magazine cover telling you how to lose weight, and the hunger turns to guilt.

Let's face it: in the 1980s, we saw an average of around 100 ads per day. Today, that number has exploded to around 500 ads per day. Most of us can't process that. Constant exposure to advertisements can lead to cognitive overload, where the brain becomes mentally drained from processing large amounts of information.

The only real solution is to be everywhere and everything to everyone who might want or use your products and services.

The Remedy:

Instead of playing in the pattern interrupt pool, try the consistency spa. People respond to short bursts of information in this information-overloaded social media world. Honing a headline or a quip is much more important to get attention than trying to explain something. If people are interested, they will search for an explanation.

Another tip is to ask people how they would like to hear from you and stick to it. Text, email, phone calls, and direct messages in social media are all options. Ask each person how they would like to hear from you. If you don't get an answer, track (if you can) how individuals are interacting and narrow the options to the most effective of these messages for each individual.

“Use the Force”

In an iconic Super Bowl ad, a young boy dressed as Darth Vader attempts to use the Force on various objects around his home. The ad culminates with a Volkswagen car starting remotely as he stands on a bridge. His dad had pushed the key, but the boy thought he had the power to control the car. Using the force to bridge the gap between your sales and marketing would be best. In other words, help your customers feel the force and use the power.

The best way to do this is by maximizing relationships and making your customers feel powerful and in control.

The Remedy:

One of the best feelings I experience when I arrive at a golf club is being greeted by my first name at check-in—before I even present my membership card. Someone went through the trouble to memorize my face and name (in full disclosure, this has been a problem for me).

Personalizing every message is a simple way to make people feel important. Having your sales team reach out to customers with no reason or nothing to sell is the same thing. Keeping your marketing segmented and personalized is the best way to make people feel heard, meaningful, and valued.

This also goes back to “Just Do It” by making collecting data and using it in a more personal way so much more critical today. Data takes us from business to grateful. We can create tools that show trends and help us optimize technology to better relate to people on a more personal and one-on-one level.

Closing Thought

Some of you may remember the Toys R Us ad “I Don't Want to Grow Up,” which touted play and toys. I still have that feeling today. I love toys. AI is a toy that helped me come up with this post. Computers are fun because they help us do so many things: become organized, be better communicators and more analytical thinkers.

Every toy I have used or owned came with instructions (even if it was simply a “for ages 4-10”). Part of that was for safety and liability. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) requires labeling that could pose choking hazards for children under 3. These expressly state the toy is unsafe for children under 3 and explain why.

I believe that thinking of marketing as play with data, computers, and tools can help us focus on the fun and not the function. And be careful not to choke on your marketing efforts.

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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.