Lately, I have been using the word 'outflank' quite a bit.. I like it. As an entrepreneur and a professional, outflanking has to be part of my repertoire to stay effective. When your army is small and your reach limited, being able to come up with creative ways to reach one's target market becomes essential (or at least that's what I tell myself). In an age of #BigDataMimicry where full, fake profiles of nonexistent people exist on the internet, complete with blogs, tweets, posts, and even video footage, the importance of 'outflanking' becomes tremendously important, less you want your message stifled a bit with waves of similar-content created algorithms. 'Marketing Tsunami by algorithm!' The tsunami is not fatal, but it surely breaks down the ability, or makes it ever more difficult for real people offering and looking for services to meet.
In a room with one bee, it is easy to spot the bee. In a room with one real bee but dozens of similar, yet different bees, it takes longer to spot the right bee, if at all.
It takes strenuous use of one's executive function skills to deftly maneuver around software mimicry that digests your content and spits out variations of it onto fake entities that can always be refashioned with new content. I believe that by strategically using some key executive function skills as part of a 'grassroots' or 'guerilla' marketing plan, small businesses can reach their target markets handsomely. Marketing professionals swim in constant executive function skill gyms as they do their work, and so something else is needed which may finally give the 'small guy' the advantage, break the possible marketing monopoly, and put wind in one's sails.
Before I spill the beans on just what this is, it is important to wrap one's mind with the following word. Forethought, or foresight is the ability to anticipate and predict. It is a major chess, war, and business skill, and it is an executive function skill. Coupled with other EF skills, or metrics a formidable strategy can be mounted that can lob one onto their target market. That said, it may involve experiencing success only when you leave your comfort zone, something most of us don't like to do. Foresight is making an image of yourself looking back to your present. We can call it your 'future past.' Being able to project the chain of decision making forward hypothetically, then looking back to the present moment avails one in the decision-making process of what choices will be most fruitful given specific goals.
Have the forethought, or practice the foresight in predicting the limitations of a social media campaign when capital is limited, and big data mimicry is an 'on the ground' realization. To outflank I believe we do not have to recreate the wheel, just go back to basics a bit. Their is nothing like pressing the flesh (shaking hands), creating personal relationships, establishing familiarity, and making the client feel comfortable with you. I think that being human is something big data mimicry may not be able to do in real time yet. Outflanking big data can be done by unplugging yourself from a solely-technologically based marketing platform, to one where you are creating real friendships, based on genuineness, sincerity and kindness, which may compliment an effective service or product.
Big data does not operate within those confines well, especially if it has to walk the streets of a town, enter people's homes, or smile. People, I think, want familiarity. No one likes impersonalized service. We like to be pampered, taken care of, and treated according to established relational understandings, to an extent. (I do!) I like to walk in to a business where I am greeted by my first name. I like to be asked how things are going for me. Others too. We are human... not a bunch of ones and zero's in algorithms.
So their you have it straight. I didn't give you actual marketing ideas, but I started some of you off on the idea that marketing success has to integrate us and them into a much more personal equation. Going out of your way to develop a winning marketing plan is much more than having capital, an ad agency, and a goal. It has to be about making real connections with people and somehow transmitting vestiges of genuineness, kindness and sincerity....love.
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