Marketing 2010: The Chicken or the Egg?

Silvana Carpanelli-Hayes is a reformed traditional marketer who spent the last 2 years as VP of Marketing at Ivy Exec. With a passion for startups, she has worked in South America, Australia and the US. Now she spends her days developing media strategies designed to be what they always should have been: Social. She can be found on Twitter @Reformedmktg

Everybody dreams of a perfect go-to-market strategy for their new product or service. We all salivate when we see success stories heralded in the media. But what do these successes have in common? The ancient argument of what comes first, the egg or the chicken?

Do they sell because we talk about them or do we talk about them because they sell?

Until very recently, I advocated for traditional online marketing strategies that limited untested social media components or other forms of experimentation. Shame on me!

After 10 years in “traditional” marketing, I have seen the light. I’ve come to realize that with out you, I am nothing, my product is nothing and my business has no value.

Don’t get me wrong, I always knew I needed you, “the customer” “the client” “the buyer.” Only now I see that what I really need more than an infusion of VC capital is you, “the follower.” I need you to Facebook-me, Twitter-me, You Tube-me. I need you to become my evangelist. I need your friends talking about me.

What is a pastor without a flock? What is a product without users that evangelize the company and the concept?

Without you, the Twitter user, I am a product sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
Without you the Facebook addict I am a restaurant, empty inside and lonely and sad.

Let’s all wake up to the reality that stale and static websites are like a Hollywood “meet cute” gone wrong. A potential buyer sees websites that does nothing to engage in conversation and what could have been an affair to remember results in an 80% bounce rate.

These meet-cute situations are not an invitation to an experience, no matter how flashy or expensive they appear. They don’t tell me eat here or buy this or consider my services. These days only user generated content can make me cab it to Brooklyn because a friend of mine synchronized his Twitter and Facebook status and described his entire meal there.

Just with that in mind I turn to the old World Wide Web and look for my favorite food bloggers to see if anybody has an opinion. No point in telling you that indeed there was some serious buzz on the little Brooklyn restaurant.

Funny thing, instead of going to their website directly I went to Menupages.com, read a few reviews and then clicked on the link to their site for just long enough to find the phone and make a reservation.

By that point, I wasn’t surprised that they were fully booked for the weekend. This is what happens when we no longer trust advertising or even Google organic results. We only trust what other people have to say.

So what I learned is that successful go-to-market strategies have changed in the deepest way possible. And it’s time for marketers to change along with them.

Image Source: AZ Rainman on Flickr