Why Marketing Strategies Come and Go

Three main reasons, actually:

1. Innovation. Pay attention to it and try to stay on the leading edge. You don't have to be the innovator but you should learn to differentiate true innovation from fads. Be one of the first marketers to grab hold of innovation as an early adopter and you will be paid well. The masses grab hold of fads and get lost in the crowd.

2. Market sentiment. The consumer is a fickle fellow/gal. It used to be cool to smoke, then smoking became a vice. I love donuts and grew up with donuts always around the house when I was a kid; now they are rarely ever seen in my kitchen and I still love 'em. If you wanted to get ahead, you went to college and worked in a related job. Now many college grads can't launch their chosen careers - so many alternatives for training, entrepreneuring, and flying solo have now surfaced.

3. Marketing abuse. We marketers are often our own worst enemies! Someone discovers a new strategy that absolutely drives big sales and decides to share it. (Or maybe others figure out what the marketer is doing and copy it.) Inevitably, the idea either becomes so common that prospects begin to ignore it - or - marketers abuse it and pervert it to the point that the strategy loses all effectiveness. Much of the abuse seems to come from slip-shod and short-cut attempts to remove all the work from the strategy and the result is often spammy and hollow garbage.

A few examples of marketing strategies that I think have been abused: free ebooks to introduce a product or service, niched mini-sites (build thousands and collect $1/day from each one), affiliate review sites, paid back linking, self-annointed guru status, article directory marketing, among others.

I think webinars are the latest example of a strategy that is being abused and I predict will become less and less effective as a marketing tool. I used to love webinars. Now most have gotten to the point that they are difficult for me to sit through. Listening to increasingly little valuable content, having to endure the ultimate pitch fest, then sitting through endless questions and comments from listeners who would be better served emailing support . . . it's a painful experience. Fake webinars (recorded sessions that are supposed to be live) have become commonplace.

What are your thoughts? Have you experienced other marketing strategies that seem to be going downhill?

Thanks for your input.

Steve