Why Digital Brands Have Kicked Traditional Marketing to the Side of the Road

Digital has clearly usurped traditional marketing methods. Remember the ubiquitous fax machine?

To be successful, your businesses must understand marketing to multi screen enabled consumers and recognize the importance of creating a selling experience that is as much digital as in-store.

Businesses must understand how mobile shopping has redefined how customers interact with business of all sizes and types. The customer life cycle is no longer dependent upon the old ways of reach out and touch - today, its a social share driven experience.

Customers are browsing the social web, reading reviews, "talking" with others and at times viewing the actual product can be an afterthought. Grok that old school sales methods don't work; sales teams need to understand consumers are all plugged in and pushy sales tactics that employ repetition or weak brand claims ("its 20% off only today...) are non starters.

Recognize brute force or "hit em over the head" repetition marketing don't work well in today's digital driven world. Identify your customer persona and build a brand story that resonates with this target market. Understand value has to be defined early in the sales experience to garner attention: today's always on mobile fickle consumers have just about unlimited choices for buying products. They want to engage with and buy from businesses that come across as authentic, humble and grounded in reality.

Embrace simplicity in design: multiple sales offers on a home page may sound great in sales meetings but they don't work with today's online shoppers. Less is more and simplicity drives sales conversions.

Be aware the click of death is about 4-6 seconds - the web experience has to work well for your visitors or they are gone in a matter of seconds - a funky looking web site with a challenging eCommerce experience is a non starter and businesses that don't recognize good web site design builds immediate and long term sales are dinosaurs.

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