The problem is that we are still talking at people, not talking to them, not bringing the value, trying to schlep our stuff, and those days are over. In a market like this, that can be seen as being very out of touch. We’re now living in a world where they need information more than they’ve ever received before about how they can more effectively be running their businesses, managing their money. So they want information from you, but they don’t want to hear your marketing messages. So how do you convert those messages?

Well, one of the strategies is through “smarketing”. The problem is most marketing departments think that their job is to develop leads, and then they think their job is done. They believe that they are in a silo. The problem with that is that that lead has not yet paid for itself, and it doesn’t until that lead turns into a customer. So until marketing understands their role and what to do to help convert that lead into a customer, we’re going to have a lot of low return on investment from our marketing dollars. In fact, I would guarantee a negative return on investment from those marketing dollars. We’re living in a new world where marketing now needs to be very one-to-one focused on the right people with the right messages and take it all the way to the end, so that that lead becomes your customer.