The Future of Advertising is Google’s “Don’t be Evil”
Google’s über cookie
Marketers are trying to collect a lot of data, in a move towards big data. But Google and users are fighting against it : keyword not provided, cookie not accepted, location turned off, notification turned off.
On the other hand, we are leaving more data trails than we have ever done before. Even garbage cans are scanning our mobile phones to get the MAC address from your phone to understand how many times you came by (they’ve stopped that now due to protest).
Next thing is you’ll get an iBeacon alert trying to sell you something because they know you’ll pass by on monday at 8u30.
Think about this for a second how addicted we are to our mobile devices and how addicted we are to using cool technology like Google. In many ways you could say Google knows us better than our wives or our husbands because all the stuff we put in there lasts seven years.
Google’s über cookie is coming
Google is in a way walking a very thin line. On the one hand they claim to protect our privacy (keyword not provided), but on the other hand Google is reinventing the bowser cookie into an über cookie: AdID.
The stuff you browse on your laptop and the stuff you browse on your smartphone could all be lumped into one big profile on you. Advertisers will be able to tap into this information, because that’s where the money comes from for Google. Some even speculate that Google will connect your online behavior with your real profile.
The Shocking Truth about Sharing Company Secrets
A few days after I had trained some people about sharing on social media, I received an email from an account manager.
He was afraid we would be sharing too much details about what we do with customers. He was afraid we would give away to much information to competitors. And I heard the same remark of CEO’s holding back on press releases about customers wins because it could hurt the business.
This is an often heard dilemma: you make great new customers, you create fantastic webinars for customers, you do thought leadership speaking slots, and make customer cases. But by sharing this content publicly you are afraid you are providing valuable information to competitors. And that might hurt your business.
I do understand these reasons, I used to think the same. But companies that keep thinking like this will soon be gone. If you don’t want that, you’ll have to make a cultural shift to being open and authentic.
Let me explain you why… Read more 
How to maximize the effect of your marketing materials?
B2B marketing organizations create many marketing materials, or execute different types of outbound marketing activities.
As explained in some of my previous posts on the increasing ineffectiveness of marketing materials, for example press releases or advertisements, today’s marketers need to adapt their marketing strategy to fit the needs of today’s buyers who are on-line and make use of search engines and social media networks.
What can you do to make your marketing materials effective?
- Make them relevant: without a listening process, you have no clue what your customers want. Of course your marketing materials need to look good, but the materials and the content of the materials need to be what your customers want.
- Make them authentic: today’s buyers can smell unauthentic materials from miles away. The golden rule is: don’t write anything down unless you immediately can proof it. Don’t inflate numbers, not even when your competition is doing this, because your customers will trust you more because you promise realistic gains.
- Set your content free: too often we are afraid that the competition might steal our ideas of get access to our marketing materials. But at the same time your customers AND Google have no access to it. Set it free, on several platforms, and promote it on all social networks your customers are using.
