Return To Accountable Marketing
Two days ago I issued a death-certificate for SEO. Yesterday I killed a unicorn and pronounced social media marketing dead.
Why? What’s wrong with SEO and SMM?
What’s wrong is that business owners fell in love with SEO and SMM for all the wrong reasons.
The SEO hallucination
Client: „Can you seo my web site for me? “
Agency: „Uhm, why would you want this? “
Client: „I’m getting ZERO business from my web site. “
Agency: „So …? “
Client: „I need SEO. If I had more traffic, I’d finally get some business. “
Agency: „I see. Your current traffic gets you zero business? “
Client: „Yes. “
Agency: „So, by raising traffic ten times via SEO you’d expect ten times as much business?“
Client: „Don’t confuse me. I don’t want more business. I want free traffic from Google! “
It’s not my fault
Business owners seem to avoid accountability like the plague. They love to be busy with marketing, but they hate to be accountable for the poor results of their efforts.
So it’s best to invest in marketing that won’t ever be measured against desirable business results like leads or sales.
„It’s not that my web site isn’t working – we’re just not having enough traffic. “
For the same reason they love social media. There’s no accountability built in.
Partners in laziness
A consultant or service provider couldn’t find a better ally than a client who’s scared of accountability.
The SEO industry sold lots of back linking without ever talking about conversions. And the social media industry was busy grooming their unicorns.
The return of accountable marketing
Change is coming. With SEO becoming unmanageable, small businesses will have to turn to other traffic sources.
People thought they were ok having survived Penguin and Panda, but they’re not. We’re just seeing the beginning of Google going all crazy on web site owners and setting the wrong priorities.
The easiest and most likely alternative to ‘free’ search traffic is paid traffic, i.e. advertising.
Within 3 years –as people get more frustrated with SEO - we’ll see a shift of budgets from SEO to traditional advertising.
A trend, interestingly, that is also on the rise in social media marketing.
The gurus who have long touted the unicorn-horn most recently started selling an entirely new product to us. Have you noticed?
Every marketer and his grandma suddenly is raving about Facebook ads. And selling their latest course on how to get the most out of Facebook advertising.
They conveniently forget to mention, that they changed sides. From social media softie to conversion oriented advertiser.
So, after some detours, it seems, we’re coming back to good old advertising.
- Markers will focus on building lead funnels and sales funnels again.
- They will fill their funnels with paid advertising.
- They will measure the results of their ads.
The fragmentation of marketing will increase, but overall I predict a return to, and a new found appreciation for, accountable marketing.