I came across a good post on Seth Godin’s blog today titled “Driveby culture and the endless search for wow.” His topic of the day was the detrimental effect of the drive by masses that drive such data as web traffic, but that build no lasting online connection or relationships.
Seth makes some good points and should make people question the metrics they use to measure marketing success like web traffic, clicks and eyeballs on the site.
“The majority of people who sign up for a new online service rarely or never use it. The majority of YouTube videos are watched for just a few seconds. Chatroulette institutionalizes the glance and click mentality. I’m guessing that more than half the people who started reading this post never finished it.
This is all easy to measure. And it drives people with something to accomplish crazy, because they want visits to go up, clicks to go up, eyeballs to go up.
Should I write blog posts that increase my traffic or that help change the way (a few) people think?”
More than ever there is a call to action for companies and their marketing departments to build valuable, strong connections to their customers and prospects. In essence they need to move away from the sheer numbers game and focus instead on quantifying high-quality interactions and relationships they build with their audience.
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One of the things I do for my clients is help them connect to their customers, validate a market need and refine their product to meet that need. The only way to do this is by communicating with those customers, whether it is through a survey, interviews, or personal visits. I emphasized the need to communicate with your customers last week in the post “
Seems like a simple mantra, but it is amazing how often it doesn’t happen. Here’s a quick test. How many people on your leadership team, say director level and above, have communicated with a customer or prospect this week? If your answer is zero then you ought to be worried.
Every VC, or venture angel has heard it. Maybe you’ve even said it. In answer to the question “who’s your competition?” The simple answer comes back:
We bring our years of experience to your marketing problems. We strive to become trusted members of your marketing team. 