From time to time, major shifts in marketing occur. We are experiencing one now, that is drastically affecting the success of marketing efforts — everywhere.
It has changed, for the first time in years, the initial hurdle you have to overcome. Many marketers have been slow to adapt, or are completely oblivious. Well, they’d better get with it.
Formerly the first barrier was simply to deliver enough communication, in a way so as to get noticed.
The keyword of the new era is LEGITIMACY.
Why?
The sheer volume of spam has increased many times over what it was even a year ago. I’m not telling you something you don’t know.
At the same time the spam has gotten more blatant and more convincing. E-mail subject lines telling outright lies are now common. Cold robocallers now hire out-of-work professional actors.
No one has time to check out every plausible communication, to see if its legitimate, of value, or an offer one would be interested in. The default is to reject any communication from someone you don’t know.
Many people, in the face of that, have turned judgement over to the AIs. They ask Chat-GPT for the “best jeweler in florida” and take whatever the answer is as gospel. It is a certainty that this is going to shift, as people gain experience with AIs, and discover just how much of a bum steer they can give you. At the same time there is a tremendous amount of work going on, to make the various intermediaries of marketing communications more trustworthy. That includes Google’s dramatic changes. It includes efforts by email providers to greatly increase the effectiveness of their anti-spam filters.
How can a marketing communication demonstrate legitimacy now?
All this trends the marketplace in the direction of big brands. You may not always love Amazon, but you know Amazon are not con artists, and their search results, showing number of buyers and ratings, helps keep you away from bad purchases.
More trustworthy search mechanisms like Clutch and Google Local Service Ads, are on the rise.
If you are a one-man band, running successfully on reputation and word-of-mouth, none of this is an issue.
But there is still a large swath of “in between” small businesses. For many such businesses, the cost of acquiring a new customer will continue to increase.
It can be successfully dealt with – but not by sticking your head in the sand.