If All You Have is a Hammer, Everything is a Nail

It would be nice if this were the last time I had to write something like this. I'm tired of reading articles that claim that marketing will hurt your business, is being completely replaced by one thing or another or is otherwise dead. It seems to me that these types of articles that make broad brush claims are usually written by people who are knowledgeable about one subject (and it's usually one they're trying to push), not the discipline of marketing as a whole. And of course, the subject du jour is social media.

Don't be mislead. Marketing done right has always been about focusing outward, that is, on the customer and on the people who influence them. Nothing new there. What’s new are the tools used to communicate. Sure, every medium can be rife with abuse and poor messaging, but to claim that marketing hurts your business is ridiculous. And besides, marketing isn't just promotions (advertising, PR, social media, et al), it involves product development, distribution and pricing as well.

What's really different about social media is that it's a digital soft sell. That is, you can't shout sales messages and expect to be effective. In other words, even if you're soft-selling or trying to get people to say nice things about you, at the end of the day, you're still trying to put something across to help your business gain customers. Oh, and that's a key benefit of marketing by the way.