Last week I was in a meeting with people from a number of different organizations all discussing a common issue. I was the “social media” guy at the table with a few traditional marketers with various specialties along with non-marketing people working through an particular situation. During the course of the discussion I realized again how stark the difference is between the way I approach marketing and promotion compared to some more traditional marketers. I attribute this difference in thinking to people like Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, and Robert Scoble…all of whom have provided books and blog that have formed the way I approach the new technology for marketing purposes. I took some notes of my thoughts at the time and here’s what came out…

It’s not that television as we’ve known it doesn’t matter. It’s just that it doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

It’s not that newspapers as we’ve known them don’t matter. It’s just that they don’t matter as much as they used to.

It’s not that radio as we’ve known it doesn’t matter. It’s just that it doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

It’s not that marketing, advertising, public relations, and any other form of promotion as we’ve known it doesn’t matter. It’s just that it doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

It’s not that the way you’ve been marketing isn’t effective anymore. It’s just that it’s less effective today than it was yesterday and it will be increasingly less effective tomorrow, next week, and next year.

The lesson here isn’t that you have to make a total switch to social media marketing today. The lesson is that you need to be moving toward social media marketing and as you do, you can’t think about it the same way as the old way you did marketing.

Imagine we’re in a deep sea fishing contest. You and me. It’s a fishing contest for a full day. At the end of the day the winner is the one with the most fish by weight. Though we’re in the same contest we have two different approaches. You have assembled the best deep sea fishermen you can find. You have expert marlin anglers since the marlin is one of the biggest (one marlin can weigh over 800 pounds…here’s a 560 pound marlin) and most prized fish you can catch. You have the best boat and technological advances for finding the marlin. Catching a marlin is hard work but you’ve hired the best in the business and you know when you come in at the end of the day with several big marlins everyone is going to be very impressed with your catch.

My crew has decided to take another route. We’re going to fish with nets. Our boat and crew is smaller and less impressive than yours and we’re going to catch salmon. Salmon are considerably smaller than the marlin weighing anywhere between 6 and 100 pounds each. I know, however, that salmon swim together and a good catch could put us in contention for the prize.

At the end of the day we return with our catches. You had a great day with nine large marlins with a total weight of 5,300 pounds. We only had one catch with 400 salmon. As we offload our salmon on the scales we estimate the average fish in our catch is 28 pounds, much smaller than your large marlins but our team’s total catch weight is 11,200 pounds. It turns out the cumulative weight of many smaller fish is much heavier than a few really big fish. We win.

New media marketing is a small fish strategy. I think that’s why traditional marketing mindsets are unsure of it. They’ve never considered a small fish strategy because it’s the exact opposite of their focus. Big fish are traditional promotional strategies. Big fish marketing tactics include magazine ads, television and radio spots, billboards, newspaper ads, direct mail campaigns and the like. Small fish marketing includes new media tactics like blogs, podcasts, social networking, online video, social media, etc.

Big fish know they’re prized and know everyone wants to catch them which makes them harder catch. They require more effort and more expense with less yield. Small fish are numerous and concentrated. They’re cheaper and easier to catch with a higher cumulative yield.

Marketers are fishing every day. Most are going after the limited supply of big fish. A few are going after the hundreds of thousands of smaller fish. Sure, it’s great to catch a big fish if you can. Catching big fish is what the industry was built on. Sometimes a really big fish gets you raises and recognition and may even bring a high return.

A funny thing is happening now though. There are more and more small fish all the time and the means to catch them are widely available, easy to use, and often free. Once you know how to catch a lot of smaller fish why would you ever try to catch a big fish again? Forget the big fish.

Yesterday I spent a few hours downtown at the first BarCamp Nashville. I met Michael, the blogger behind Marketing Monster (thanks to Chris for the introduction) and he and I were talking about how we both have our degrees in public relations but work in marketing. It got me thinking about how new media marketing is really much more geared toward those of us with a a PR background/training and here’s why I think that:

New media marketing is largely unpredictable and uncontrollable. It works on its own time frame and cannot be forced or it’s quickly recognized as contrived and fake. When new media marketing works, it does so with a grassroots growth or viral explosion that seems to come from nowhere. It’s all the stuff that PR professionals live with and love about the business. It’s the idea of dropping a few hooks in the water to catch some really big fish…though in new media the value of a “big fish” is not simply the weight of a single fish (like a story in the New York Times for instance) rather the cumulative weight of thousands of smaller fish like bloggers, online video creators, podcasters, social networking friends, and shared photo references.

Marketers, especially the most traditional ones, seem to have trouble with the new media because they don’t think like PR people. They are accustomed to complete control over the message, image, creative development and brand. They don’t have ears to listen because they operate with one way messages. This is doubly bad because it means they talk only when they have planned to and are not prepared when a response in necessary.

Here’s what the disconnect seems to boil down to: the marketers are the ones focused on the emerging technology while the PR pros are not giving it the same attention. So while on the one hand you’ve got PR people with arguably the best mindset for new media marketing due to their inherent thinking, they don’t seem to have the knowledge or interest (I’ll have a personal example of that here on the blog in a few days.) Then on the other hand you see the marketers who have quickly seen the value of new media and salivate all over themselves for a big score but they don’t naturally have the best mindset to really do it right and end up making themselves look worse. Chris discovered an example of this two weeks ago.

Maybe new media will show us the closest convergence of PR and marketing that we’ve known. Maybe some PR firms will realize they have an opportunity to compete with ad agencies and marketing firms now. Maybe in the future there won’t even be PR firms, ad agencies, and marketing firms because they’re all rolled into creative communications companies that do it all. Maybe corporate communications offices and marketing divisions will do the same. Maybe it’s time for you to start moving this direction today.

Tonight around 6:30 I was sitting at the kitchen table with my daughter and the phone rang. It was an automated telemarketing call and since we get those from time to time I was about hang up but the voice asked the question, “If you’re interested in finding out about a local church press ‘1′.” Since I’m in church marketing and this was my first church telemarketing call I had to see where it took me. The automated voice told me that “New Church (name changed to protect the guilty) is an exciting place for families with contemporary worship, a great children’s ministry, Bible based teaching and it’s in your local area.”

The voice never told me where in my local area this church is located but informed me that if I wanted more information about the church I could leave my name and mailing address at the conclusion of the message to receive further information by mail. The voice also told me that the information I would receive would guide me to the website where I could find out more about the church but it never told me what the actual URL for the church is (in case I was actually interested in finding out more about it now).

So here’s my question…what were the leaders at this church thinking when they chose telemarketing as their method of solicitation? Of anything they could have done they opted for one of the most notoriously disruptive devices known to mankind. People dislike this form of solicitation so much that there’s a National Do Not Call Registry. Is this a sign that we have officially reached the end of the road when it comes to good ideas on ways churches can promote themselves in their communities?

The fact of the matter is that people are so accustomed to the daily barrage of marketing messages that their filters are turned on almost all the time. Also, there are certain marketing methods that are simply viewed as obtrusive (like telemarketing calls and pop-up ads). With both of these things in mind it’s important for churches to be even more aware and strategic with their marketing methods. If anything, churches should aspire to be the most attentive toward people’s preferred methods of communication because the message of the church is so important that we should want to create as few secondary obstacles for people to overcome as possible. If someone is going to have an issue with a church (and we know there will be plenty) it shouldn’t be with their marketing. Let an unbeliever’s issues with a church be related to something of substance that can start them down a road toward a life changing decision.

I’m all for good church marketing. I do it every day with my job. Tonight, however, I was both challenged and disappointed. I was disappointed with this very bad church marketing idea and I was challenged to consider what constitutes good church marketing and what responsibilities a church may have with any promotional effort it makes.

I’m encouraged too. I’m encouraged by where I see things going. The new media (web 2.0) tools facilitate relationship building and allow churches who use them to engage people and establish connections through interactions. These new tools are some the best things permission marketing has to offer and I believe they will be responsible for some of the greatest strides churches can make to connect with people…especially people who don’t want telemarketing calls.