O2 Network Crash - Meltdown Marketing
O2 one biggest networks for mobile, 3G and other on the go devices has melted like a candle on a summers day in the hot sun of Rome. They don’t know why, they don’t know when it’ll be fixed; they don’t know if it’ll be fixed as fast as we want it fixed. Yesterday I was also out down with my iPhone and it felt weird.
This puts many businesses and marketers into total panic and meltdown and that got me thinking what if the whole netwwrok went down for a week, two weeks a month or even more?
Marketing tools like SMS, mobile contact, 3G, email, internet, websites, social media and more would vanish.
This in turn would mean that one of two things would happen; 1. A lot of businesses that use those tools only would vanish. 2. A lot of business owners would have to get very creative.
Yet the problems I see as a consultant today compared to ten years ago are almost the very same.
Ten years ago clients would come to me with very specific ideas and thoughts. Things like
- How do we create a magazine advert that gets response?
- What newspapers should we advertise in?
- How do we design billboards for advertising?
- What’s the best way to get response and open rates high from envelopes?
- Should we go first or second-class?
- Do you think it’s worth having a website? (Yes a real question!)
- How do we do P.R?
- What is the best kind of flyers for our business?
- Should we go glossy or matt?
- And I could literally sit here and type what we now call, ‘Old School’ marketing questions.
Now I know things change, the world changes and todays world is so plugged in the view of marketing from new and old business has changed dramatically yet… when we get meltdowns from the likes of O2 social media becomes packed with complaints of how the world has almost stopped and nothing can now move until O2 are back online.
The reliance of FREE web marketing is destroying lots of business. For the reason that free is always the most targeted. Also think about this. The mindset of groups, communities are very different to the mindset of a buyers market. Facebook for example is a community hang-out yet I see many, many people go to Facebook and rely solely on Facebook to market their business. Yet the real question business owners should ask is not…. ‘Is it free and are there lots of people there?’ But should be, ‘are they buyers?’ Yes relationships can be built and that leads into buyers long term but to reply on this kind of technology for ALL of your marketing is a huge mistake.
So the real question is do you have a back-up plan, an old school plan, a plan B mindset for times of meltdown marketing?
If you were asked this question … if the web vanished tomorrow, how would you market your business?’ How would you reply?
Why trade magazines?
OK not cheap but the returns can be huge.
Years ago I used to write copy for a company that ran an advert once a month. The advert in total would cost them £68,000 with everything involved.
They sold a product direct that retailed at £19,99. They had to sell 3,402 units Each month they sold over 10,000 units This pulled in £199,900 They then sold again to the list of buyers related product
This created a huge multi-million pound sales machine.
- NO email
- NO Facebook
- NO SMS
- NO web
- Old school marketing.
Recently I worked with another client.
He spent a couple of grand on his new website as this was to be his number one focus for marketing. I advised him against this as his ONLY tool. He went ahead anyway. The problem with a new website is this… TRAFFIC … a website as a stand-alone marketing tool is almost like fishing in a pool with no fish.
So why did he go against proven advice? He felt is was easy and took no work. I told him I have clients that work ten hours a day on a website marketing and promoting the site. I told him that I work with SEO experts that spend month after month on single websites to get sales. He still went with his new site.
Some months later he sold ZERO from his website and Facebook despite the cost of the website build, the time involved playing around on Facebook.
He called me in tears (literally) as his shop was failing fast! We created a flyer that got hand–posted through doors. This flyer generated just under £16,000 in 3-days then over £60,000 in sales over a couple of weeks!
So what’s your marketing meltdown plan? Are you stuck in the, Facebook, social media, online and SMS mode because that’s what everyone does? If you go offline or 3G is out for a while can you still generate real business or are you totally at the mercy of being connected?
Even here we direct mail today. Yes it costs money for envelopes, stamps, printing and more but the sales results are far higher than email or any other online media. If the web drops we carry on printing and selling.
Let the O2 meltdown be a warning to all business, your business. Did you know?