How do you know what you don’t know?
This week, I had the great pleasure of joining a panel of eMarketing practitioners in a focus group held by the Canadian Marketing Association, in preparation for their upcoming 2007 Digital Marketing Conference.
The group generally agreed on the following points:
a) Clients STILL don’t “get” eMarketing!
b) This is the fault of eMarketers.
c) This is also the fault of clients.
Often, I’m approached by participants in my eMarketing classes with secretive questions. “What is a blog, anyway?”… “Are our eMarketing tactics legal?”…”How can I get my boss to invest in online marketing when he doesn’t even know how to open his own inbox?”
There is a massive gap in the collective knowledge of the eMarketing community - both purchasers and providers. I’m never going to claim to know everything about this rapidly-changing field. I rely on peers and colleagues to help me keep up - and they do the same with me.
As providers of eMarketing services, how do we educate our clients without making them feel uncomfortable? And how do we do it without giving away the farm? (Especially in the big-box agencies, where the profit doesn’t come from providing a lot of free information?)
As clients, how do you get to a point where you can trust your agency to give you the right answers - and know that you can come back with further questions?
I believe that these challenges typify fragmentation in our marketplace - where boutique providers can sometimes out-perform the ruling class of ad agencies and communications firms. It’s likely a key reason that so many of the smart larger shops are on a buying rampage, gobbling up small, hungry firms staffed by keen eMarketers.
Our focus group participants also agreed on another thing. There are four general types of clients out there…
- Those who “get” it
- Those who don’t get it
- Those who don’t get it, but are willing to learn
- Those who don’t get it, but are pretending to
Only history will tell whether the pretenders and the close-minded manage to thrive in the coming five to ten years.
Clients: Ask your agency if they’ll educate you.
Suppliers: Ask your clients if they want education.
Everybody: Ask your kids (if you’ve got ‘em) how they’d like to be advertised and marketed to, when they grow up. That is, if you can tear them away from the cell phone or computer long enough to get an answer!