My new column is live at The Drum:
Too much direct response marketing and personal selling, and no one is watering the tree. Too much brand advertising and public relations, and no one is picking the fruit. All parts of the promotion mix are important for long-term success.
You’ll see what I mean. But first, let’s do the time warp back to Sunnydale, California, in 1997.
‘Television marketing’ is not a ‘thing’
Imagine that it is the 1990s and I want to reach the people who watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (The vastly underappreciated show recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and was responsible for the rise of Joss Whedon and the modern golden age of television.)
After putting on my plaid flannel shirt and JNCO jeans, I would go to the office, drink a Surge, and consider three tactics out of the five that comprise the promotion mix:
– Brand advertising
– Publicity (with a product placement)
– Direct marketing (with a direct-response infomercial)
I could run a brand advertisement. I could feature a product in the middle of the high school library where the Scooby Gang researches how to battle the monster of the week. I could hire Sarah Michelle Gellar to appear in an infomercial that would air after an episode.None of these activities would be ‘television marketing’ because ‘television marketing’ is not a ‘thing’. No one has ever used that phrase.
Marketing communications is the transmission of a message within marketing collateral over a channel to an audience in one or more of the tactical frameworks within the promotion mix. If I advertise on television, ‘advertising’ is the tactic, the advertisement itself is the collateral, and television is the channel over which I transmit the advertisement.
In the same way – 20 years later – ‘Facebook marketing’, ‘social media marketing’ and ‘blog marketing’ are not ‘things’. Facebook is a channel. Social media are a collection of channels. A company’s blog is a channel. If a marketer creates a video and spreads it on Facebook with the goal of getting immediate, trackable sales, the tactic is direct-response marketing, the video is the collateral and the channel is Facebook. It’s not ‘video marketing’.
Marketers who use those phrases are confusing marketing tactics, marketing channels and marketing collateral.