The Major Business / Marketing Problem that No One is Talking About

Business (and Marketing) Has a Problem...

Marketing has a major problem, which is that are way too many things to pay attention to. I’ve talked before about reaching Peak SaaS Fatigue.

Consider this… most of the content we consume on social platforms was uploaded within the past 24 hours. So what does that mean for all the old content we worked so hard on, and spent all that money on?

We can’t watch all the movies and shows, read all the books, listen to all the podcasts, watch all the clips… It’s impossible to keep up with it all.

Information overload.

On top of that, there are millions upon millions of companies trying to reach us, and sometimes they do manage to cut through the noise.

In my case, I will often see something that looks interesting and I will email myself, open a new tab, or screenshot it. I have the best of intentions and am genuinely excited or curious about the thing. But then, it becomes a full-time job to go through all these emails, tabs, and screenshots, and follow up on my interest.

Often, I just want to get offline and unplug.

Currently, I have 500+ emails from myself that I have yet to open. If something REALLY interests me, that email will be sent to a ‘Get to Now’ folder. However, that folder has over 100 unopened emails to date. So clearly that didn’t work either.

Within these emails is information, ideas, tools that could improve my workflow, save me time, reduce stress, make me money… But I just don’t have the time to go through them all. It takes an enormous amount of time to learn about a new tool or platform, to consider the alternatives, schedule demos, do trials, read the reviews, learn all the nuances…

And I assume you are just like me.

So as marketers / product designers / business owners… what do we do? Especially when resources are lean?

Are we just contributing our drop in the ocean, or is there some other way we can make our mark more effectively? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

To Invest in Brand or Not? 🤔

I’ve talked, and written about, branding (way too many articles and videos to reference, but you can like to them all from the blog page or the branding page). This is definitely one way to stand out, and there are countless examples of this working.

The difference between a well known and market leading brand vs a brand you’ve never heard of, is often not the product. McDonald’s does not make the best hamburger. Red Bull does not make the best tasting drink. But, for all these examples, we can also point to market leaders who don’t seem to invest a lot in their branding. Take Windex for example. Do you follow Windex on social media? Yeah, me neither. When was the last time you saw a Windex billboard? Have they ever sponsored your favourite sporting event?

So how do we reconcile this paradox? It seems as though branding is really just a mechanism for building trust. That’s really what we want. We buy Windex because we trust Windex. Why? Because they are recognizable, been around forever, are available in every major retailer that sells cleaning supplies… But we cannot achieve this same level of mind and market share overnight.

Okay, so how else can brands build trust?

Associations (i.e. sponsoring events or partnering with others that have already tapped into your consumer base.). For example, Rolex sponsors Golf, Tennis, and motorsports events because those are the types of activities that their target consumer play or consume. Celebrity (or influencer) endorsement has been around forever and will continue to work if done in the right way, for a long enough period. Sponsoring one episode of a famous podcast will obviously be less effective than sponsoring every episode of a podcast over the course of a year or many years.

But again, this can be seen as noise. Nobody listens to ads on podcasts. We skip those.

So what else?

Zig When Others Zag

There won’t be one answer that everyone can follow and have success. The second something works, there becomes a countdown until it stops working. The key is to always zig when others zag. Be different to stand out. Whether it’s your packaging, your associations and partnerships, your offer, your attention grabbing campaigns (whatever those may be).