Marketing has been getting harder. Have you noticed?
- It’s harder to get your social media posts seen.
- It’s harder to rank your articles in search.
- It’s harder to get your emails opened, much less clicked.
I started seeing early signs of this shift about seven years ago. I watched it accelerate during the pandemic. And I see no signs it will improve in the future. In fact, I expect it to get harder.
Why? Because it’s part of a bigger trend that is changing consumer behavior and the way they interact with and process the world around them. Keep reading to understand what this trend is, how it affects us, and how it changes what we do as marketers.
Digital Maturity Is Here
Digital maturity is the point in time when the world adopted the basic behaviors and technology inherent in a digital lifestyle, such as:
- Internet usage
- Virtual communication, meetings, and events
- Online product research and purchases
- Electronic processing of those purchases (e.g., eSignature and digital storage)
Digital maturity is based on the bell curve of digital adoption.
Throughout much of the 20th century, computer technology was used primarily by scientists. But by the end of the 1900s, it had made its way into society, creating once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for early adopters.
By 2010, most of the world had begun transitioning to a digital future. Microsoft was fulfilling its vision of having a computer on every home and desk. Technology and infrastructure was being updated and/or developed. Most businesses had created a website and were adopting digital tools and strategies for selling in a digital world.
Adults transitioning to digital behaviors during this time were part of the early majority. And by now, we had an entire generation that had never experienced an analog world.
But many people, especially if their jobs didn’t require digital tools and tactics, didn’t see the need to adopt new digital behaviors. Many of these people may have lived their lives without fully transitioning.
It was the pandemic that accelerated digital maturity, pushing laggards to adopt digital behaviors. In lockdown, if they wanted to engage with friends and family, they had to learn how to use Zoom. They had to rely on ecommerce for basic needs.
If I were to put a date on the moment the world entered digital maturity, I’d estimate May 2020. By the end of the pandemic, the world was operating digitally.
The Impact of Digital Maturity
Digital maturity is still in its early stages, which means we notice it most in our workflows, processes, and tools. We prefer smart tools that can assist us in daily activities. Good examples are smart phone and refrigerators that tell us when to buy more milk.
We’ve already developed new behaviors that wouldn’t have been possible in an analog world. For instance, there was a day when journalists and editors kept a dictionary on their desk. Today, they use the Merriam-Webster app and other online resources. Many of us have a virtual assistant like Alexa in our homes. That trend will continue and humans will become more integrated with technology.
Digital maturity also requires new legislation and safeguards. For instance, a company can be sued for not making their website and content accessible to people with digital disabilities. Since the world operates digitally, all people must be able to access our digital spaces.
Privacy laws are another outcome of digital maturity. As people engage online, more of their personal data becomes publicly accessible. We need to be able to protect that data.
Already we’re seeing technological advances that wouldn’t be possible without digital maturity. AI is a good example. It’s been enhancing the performance of many of our tools for years, but now that the digital lifestyle has been normalized, AI is available for anyone to use.
It’s the natural next step from digital adoption. And as we saw with digital adoption, children born after 2020 will consider AI, online privacy, and digital accessibility a normal part of their lives.
How Digital Maturity Affects Marketing
Many of the strategies we now use to market and grow a business were developed for an analog or early-stage digital world. Is it any wonder they’re failing us?
If you were to ask farmers today to leverage strategies that were prevalent before the Industrial Age, they’d probably laugh. The tools they use now are far more effective.
Yet marketers are doubling down on strategies that were developed around the time Google, Amazon, and smart phones were entering the market. A good example of this is business blogging.
Around 2010, Content Marketing Institute promoted content marketing as the best way for B2B businesses to drive growth. At that time, only a small percentage of companies had a blog, and they were just learning how to publish online content effectively. As a result, early adopters found massive success.
I was part of that movement, and I pushed every client and employer to adopt and master advanced content marketing strategies to drive growth.
But as more companies began practicing content marketing, it became clear that there was a saturation point. Mark Shaefer published his content shock article. And I started seeing a decline in the effectiveness of the strategies we were using.
That’s also when marketers began understanding the vital importance of attention.
The Economics of Attention
Content creation is at an all-time high. Whether it’s a TikTok influencer or an enterprise brand’s social media channel, every brand is using content to drive awareness and gain their target audience’s attention.
But with so many content creatiors hitting publish every day, we’re creating far more content than any individual has time to consume.
In short, you’re competing for your customers’ attention — and the more content available to them, the harder it is for yours to stand out. Some researchers estimate that consumers are bombarded with as many as 10,000 marketing messages a day.
Platforms have had to wrestle with how they will handle this overflow of content. To help, they’ve developed algorithms that weed out low-quality content. Based on a users viewing habits, they deliver the most relevant, highest quality content to their feed.
Marketers, in return, have developed strategies to work around these algorithms. Ironically, they only need to understand the economics of attention to “beat” the algorithm: high quality content that gives the user the experience they want. On TikTok, that’s entertainment. On LinkedIn, it’s thought leadership. On Google, it’s clear answers to the question being asked.
But I digress.
The only way to beat the economics of attention is to stop creating more content. You do need content, but it must be customer-centric, and it must create real value while differentiating your brand or product.
This is just one example. What I want you to take away from this discusion is this: Digital maturity changes everything. And instead of doubling down on strategies developed for an emerging technology, we need to find a new way.
It’s Not Going to Be Easy
We need to realize the full impact of digital maturity. Competition is fierce, and it will only get worse. We’ll struggle to be seen. And we’ll need to work twice as hard to gain and retain a customer.
It’s time to reexamining everything we do. Most of the tactics we use today were developed when the internet was new, and many of them were little more than adaptations of analog best practices. They weren’t designed for a digitally mature marketplace.
We need a new playbook.
I’m working on ideas for winning in the current environment. But for now, I’ve put together a short guide called Gain & Retain that will explain a bit more about what I’m seeing.
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