Short Term Or Short Sighted

One of the things that I do at my day job is read white papers and take in Webinars on trends in my industry. And what you see, over and over, is the move from mass adtech moves, and spray and pray distribution, to custom work, dynamic generation for personal relevance, and a concierge level of service.

There's a simple reason to this: custom work is a service, instead of a commodity, and making money from commodities isn't fun or sexy or what venture capital likes to see from adtech start ups. Commodities are always subject to third-world offsourcing and your revenue model getting hacked, because, well, hey, commodity. As an old manager told me once, you don't want to be the guy putting sugar in packets; you want to be the guy putting some zero calorie sweetener in packets, because that's going to get you a margin premium. (I have no idea if he was right on the sugar, by the way, but the point is still valid.)

And all of this seems fine and inevitable and sensible, especially when you've got consumer segments that are lucrative and small... but this also runs straight into the wall that is scalability, while also taking some serious damage from the possibilities of cybercreep and privacy actions.

Having worked on the front lines at a number of places where the tech allowed us to do wildly targeted tactics, what I can tell you from personal experience is this... abusing the potentials does not pay off. What winds up happening is that a sizable percentage of the group gets spooked by your messaging, and quickly takes steps to make sure that you lose this kind of access. Also, to let others know about the practice.

But in the short term, it works, but only if you look at things from surface and immediate metrics. And you get to look proactive about driving better rates, especially if your goal is short-term success that will prove you should be around for the long run.

Unfortunately, what inevitable winds up happening is that you eventually get to a better metric: return on investment, or ROI. That's not always a great moment for marketers, especially if the new customer acquisition turns out to be, well, a very unprofitable kind of customer. To wit; if you have only ever conditioned them to buy on price, to expect a deal if they don't buy right away, to never pay for shipping or without a coupon code... well, how good does that boost in short-term rates look now?

The better way to run your business, in my opinion, is to get to the metrics that matter as soon as possible, and to get buy-in from your management on a more holistic and long-term approach.

With the obvious caveat that, well, you need good management to get to this better place.

But if you aren't working for good management in the first place, I have one piece of advice for you... hit the short-term goal.

And make sure you're looking for your next gig, and getting paid as soon as possible for this one.

Because bad management can end more than your marketing gig, if you catch my drift...

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