eBusinessBlog.org Leveraging marketing & technology to solve business problems.

Stop “Marketing for the Sake of Marketing”

Online marketers, brand managers, and channel marketing managers: Why are we in business?

• To build our mailing list?
• To "get more traffic" to our site?
• To increase average time spent on our site?
• To increase average pageviews per visit on our site?
• To get more new users to visit our site (no matter how qualified)?
• To get more followers on twitter?
• To get more fans on Facebook?

None of the above.

These are by-products of a marketing campaign. In fact, these are not even indicators to suggest positive or negative performance of a campaign. Why? Because they are not relevant to a consumer/customer. If these are listed as goals of a campaign then this is "marketing for the sake of marketing."

What is relevant to a consumer/customer?

Growing your mailing list by 10% does nothing if that 10% never buys your products. Increasing time spent on your website does not suggest you've tapped a resource for new brand advocates, either (it may however suggest you've created additional roadblocks preventing site visitors from completing desired tasks in a short amount of time).

Meaningful messaging that triggers action leading to a conversion -- this is marketing and it's why we're in business. Anything else is just noise that makes your brand irrelevant to your target audience.