The analog world is dying, as highly segmented brands find it more and more difficult to connect with narrow target audiences via blunt mass media and as consumers spend more and more money on devices and services that eliminate advertising from their lives. But marketers are struggling to adopt digital because what it does looks to them nothing like marketing. But that’s because the concept of marketing was first coined in 1960 to explain the effects of cheap, mass television. Marketers didn’t select TV as their medium of choice. Marketing was invented to explain the effects of cheap TV. To think digital, marketers need to completely erase what is in their heads. They then need to use the following principles:

1. Most analog marketing hits the wrong people, or the right people at the wrong time. Digital is more efficient and more impactful because it can hit only the right people, and only at the right time.
2. There are many digital media. But the most powerful is digitally enhanced word of mouth. Use it with care though – you can’t use it to buy your way to success.
3. In the analog era, marketing was about getting people to think things so they might do things. Digital media are interactive, so now it’s the other way round. Marketing is now about getting people to do things.
4. There’s no point using really smart search marketing if you don’t spend as much time thinking about what happens after the click.
5. No consumer will wait 10 seconds for a brand website to download. Keeping people waiting is a sin.
6. Most marketers are dataphobes. And with good reason. Digital data streams can paralyze marketing departments unless they are handled expertly. So handle data with care.
7. Digital media will continue to evolve rapidly for the next twenty years. So don’t wait for the dust to settle. Marketers need to adopt a permanent beta mentality in their marketing planning.
8. Why find a new customer when you already have one. Smartly managed, digital relationships can last a lifetime.
9. In the digital era, all brand owners are also media owners. Save media money and find the perfect partner.
10. Web 2.0 is all about consumers working together. Work out how to collaborate with them too in the channel of web.
11. In the analog era the point of much marketing was to encourage consumers to trial a product or service. In the digital era, we can be more direct. Trial can be our startpoint, not our endpoint. Experience is the best form of marketing.
12. Handle privacy issues carefully. You don’t need tons of information about a consumer to influence them. Quite often, all you need is one key piece of information.
13. Digital media are already much more efficient than analog media. But Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 will be much more efficient yet again. Digital media need to evolve.
14. Work on predicting the future. Marketing and media are now moving faster than you think, and much faster than your company can respond to.
15. Build a closer relationship with the truth. Because in the digital era, the people who tried your service yesterday are talking to those who are trying it tomorrow.
16. The consumer has worked out how to use the internet to cut marketing out of their decision making processes faster than marketers have learned how to use it to stay in control. So the consumer is in control – for now.
17. There is a lot more demand to be had for products and services that can be delivered instantly than for things people have to wait for.
18. Boring isn’t boring at the moment of truth. This is vital news for the financial services and life insurance companies that have seen their marketing more than anyone else’s ignored by empowered consumers.
19. The world is globalizing slower than you think. Localization is much, much more than just translation.
20. Many things were better when they were analog. Just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it’s better.
21. ‘All warfare.’ said Sun Tzu, ‘is based on deception.’ In the analog era, everyone’s marketing strategy was obvious. Not so today – so keep yours secret.