People are coming back into vogue, at least in marketing. And I can prove it.
Since I’m a believer in the cyclical nature of all things, I knew people would reappear in marketing. I didn’t know when. But I did know why: Data doesn’t buy anything. People do.
The proof appeared in a post called, “Marketing…DATA-DRIVEN“. In its vehement promulgation of data over dialogue, of aggregation and analysis over contact and communication, of information over insight, of process over people, it disproved its own point and gave us all the assurance we need that human beings haven’t been done away with. Not yet.
Exhibit A: “Marketers are increasingly expected to develop a deep understanding of their customers (aka Profile) and to leverage this intelligence (aka insights) to increase revenues and profits for the organization.”
Translation: You can’t sell anything to a customer you don’t know (aka know).
Exhibit B: “Customer intelligence and data-driven marketing techniques … are utilizing customer insights to allocate marketing investments, are targeting marketing messages based upon both value and likelihood of acceptance, are implementing a strategy to coordinate campaigns, marketing messages, and branding at every customer touchpoint, are calculating campaign effectiveness rapidly, and are consistently improving their marketing processes by incorporating lessons learned into the model.”
Translation: You can talk to your customer, or you can buy my data-driven model.
Exhibit C: “Many organizations are still utilizing antiquated, outdated and inflexible marketing business processes supported by inadequate tools, marketing mix models, batch vs. real-time capabilities, and agencies that lack the ability to integrate and provide analytics/insights on multiple disparate sources of consumer or customer data (aka data platforms and analytics expertise).”
Translation: Many dinosaurs (aka people) still talk to other dinosaurs (aka other people).
While I’d love to employ customer intelligence and data-driven marketing techniques to try and sell you a Secret Decoder Ring from The Chautauqua Center for Inscrutable Gibberish, I won’t. I will, however, share this with you: If someone uses 1,064 words in an attempt to sell you something, you likely don’t want it. And you surely don’t need it.
The next time someone dumps this kind of hyperbolic garbage on you, run to the phone, call your best prospect, negotiate your best price, close the deal, and consider yourself ahead of the game.
People are coming back. All the digital marketing in the world won’t change that.
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Image by geralt, courtesy of pixabay.com.