Over the years I've worked with hundreds of people who own and manage businesses. I've always been amazed at how many of them expected to see results immediately from the marketing they did. And it didn't matter what type of marketing they were doing either. They wanted results right now!
Maybe this shouldn't have surprised me. After all, we live in a high-speed Internet, instant messaging, multi-tasking, get to the point world.
For example, Texas recently raised their speed limit to 80 MPH in some parts of the state. (Do they really move that fast in Texas?)
Or, witness any teenager using instant messaging. Odds are they're IM'ing with 2, 3, 4 or more other kids at the same time. (My head hurts just thinking about that!)
So, is it any wonder we want instant results from our marketing?
But that still does not make it happen.
When we communicate with people to promote our business, it pays to be patient.
Because all the technological innovation and cultural changes in the world don't necessarily increase our ability to do the two most important things we need to do to become customers:
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Receive, understand and believe the information that's coming at us.
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Determine if the organization can do something for us that we want.
Call it a battle of technology versus psychology.
Psychology wins.
We all have so much information coming at us every second it's hard for any one message to cut through and stick to our brains. This is triply true for things that are new to us. Because we don't recognize them. They're unfamiliar to us so they get filtered out.
Blame that on our cave-dwelling ancestors.
Because of them, we're skeptical by nature.
In the earlier periods of human development, a healthy dose of skepticism kept us alive each day. And, it's still a useful trait to have.
So, anything new to us needs to overcome our natural defense mechanisms. It needs to prove to us that it's useful, safe, friendly and is something that we simply cannot live without.
And I thought marketing communications was easy!
Keep these challenges in mind as you plan and implement your marketing and your communications. They'll help you have a realistic expectation of when you should expect results from your campaign.
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