Den folgenden Beitrag hat mir David Meerman Scott, Autor des Buchs „The New Rules of Marketing and PR“ (deutsch:
„Die neuen Regeln für Marketing und PR im Web 2.0“
The following article was provided by David Meerman Scott, author of „The New Rules of Marketing and PR“ (German:
„Die neuen Regeln für Marketing und PR im Web 2.0“
What we all really want is ATTENTION
I’d like to be bold and boil down thousands of conversations I’ve had over the past ten years as well as about five years blogging into one word: ATTENTION.
Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners want people to pay attention to their company. Marketers, PR pros, advertisers, and salespeople are on the payroll for one reason: To generate attention.
In thinking about attention, there seem to be four main ways to generate it today. As I evaluate companies on a regular basis it seems that they are spending too much time, money, and effort on three ways of generating attention, and not enough on a fourth way, which is to earn attention by publishing great information online that people will find.
You can BUY attention. (This is called advertising). You buy access to people through television commercials, magazine and newspaper ads, the Yellow Pages, billboards, tradeshow floor space, direct mail lists, and the like. Advertising agency staffers are really good at buying attention. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult an advertising agency, the solution always involves buying attention.
You can BEG for attention. (This is called Public Relations). You beg for access via the editorial gatekeepers at radio and TV stations, magazines, newspapers, trade journals, and more and more these days, bloggers, podcasters and other social networking sites. I realize that the word „beg“ is a little extreme, but in my former life as VP of corporate communications for several public companies I did feel a bit like a beggar. And these days I get hundreds of pitches a month from people (usually PR agency staffers) who want me to write about something in the magazine articles I write or my blog or books and many of these pitches have a whiff of desperation about them. Public Relations agency staffers are really good at begging for attention. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a public relations agency, the solution always involves generating attention from third parties.
You can BUG people one at a time to get attention. (This is called sales). You knock on doors, call people on the telephone, send personal emails, or wait for individuals to walk into your showroom. Again, sorry about the extreme nature of the word „bug“ but that’s what I feel when the confronted with pushy sales tactics. Salespeople are really good at getting attention one person at a time. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a sales professional, the solution always involves generating attention one person at a time.
You can EARN attention online. (There is debate on what this is called.) People have referred to creating information on the Web as „inbound marketing,“ „new marketing,“ „social media marketing,“ „content marketing,“ and „permission marketing.“ The idea of all of these is creating something interesting and publishing it online for free: A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like. An increasing cadre of social media gurus claim to be really good at generating attention through social media. The problem is that whenever you have an attention problem and consult a social media guru, the solution always involves earning attention by publishing content online.
I recommend that every businessperson know what the four ways to generate attention are. And you should understand the point of view of the person you are talking with about attention, especially when there is the inevitable pushback about earning attention through what I call the new rules of marketing and PR.
Most organizations have a corporate culture around one of these approaches to generating attention. (Examples: P&G primarily generates attention through advertising, Apple via PR, EMC via sales, and Zappos via social media). Often the defining organizational culture is because the founder or the CEO has a strong point of view. When the CEO comes up through the sales track, all attention problems are likely to become sales problems.
Chances are that your CEO did not come up via the social media track. So you’ll have to convince your boss to invest in social media. Most organizations over spend on advertising and sales and under-invest in social media, but nearly all organizations should be doing some combination of all four ways of generating attention.
David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and the author of the award-winning BusinessWeek best-selling book The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly, which is being published in 24 languages and the new hit book World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. He is a recovering VP of marketing for two publicly traded technology companies and was also Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world’s largest newspaper and electronic information companies. David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and has presented at industry conferences and events in over forty countries.
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