What Does a Grand Rapids Marketing Group Know About Economics?

Marketing and economics go together like...

• Peanut butter and jelly
• Laverne and Shirley
• Mac-n-cheese and ketchup 

Okay, so maybe not everyone agrees that all of those things go together, but this blog is about how marketing and the economy really do go hand-in-hand. And it’s also about convincing people that the economic environment we’re in right now is the perfect time to focus on and invest in modern marketing. But first, some background.

The definition of economics: The branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth¹. It is the study of the satisfaction of wants and needs, through the use of (usually constrained or scarce) resources. 

The definition of marketing: The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large².

The connection between economics and marketing comes down to the fact that resources are constrained. Be it time, money, labor, or raw materials, marketing works at the intersection of scarce resources and human wants and needs. 

I have had the privilege of attending the Grand Rapids Economic Club’s Annual Economic Outlook, presented by Dr. Alan Beaulieu of ITR, for many years running now. His ability to make economics and statistics interesting and relevant never ceases to amaze me. And he holds himself accountable to his annual predictions reviewing them at the start of each new annual outlook (and he’s eerily accurate with his predictions!). 

One of the things he said continues to influence the recommendations we make for our clients. “Capital finds a way… much like life in Jurassic Park.” I’m not sure everyone in the audience got the reference but I could clearly hear Jeff Goldblum’s voice in my head and picture the scene with the velociraptor eggs perfectly.  

The relevance? Right now, the federal government is investing in infrastructure and the economy through stimulus checks, low-interest rates, start-up and ongoing business funding, and more.  With a shrinking labor force (just look at our overall population forecast to see what I’m talking about) and funding availability, it’s time to address the future labor problems now and invest in the future of your business with automation.

Let me give you a few examples to consider:   

• Are you in manufacturing and looking for hourly workers to do quality inspection work?  Have you considered artificial intelligence that uses cameras to catch micro-defects faster and more accurately than the human eye³? 
• Do you produce a case study for your business and then spend hours trying to share it to your current customers, prospects, sales team, the website, your blog, external media sources, and all of your social media channels? If you’re investing in modern marketing, one piece of great content can get shared, tracked, and reshared multiple times through one platform (for example, we use HubSpot for this). Great content should scale!
• Is your sales team cold calling customers and then writing the same prospecting and follow-up emails over and over again? If it’s repeatable, could it/should it be automated so that they can spend their time talking to qualified prospects that are actually interested in your products? 

Why start automating now? There are five factors⁴ that will influence the pace at which your business will adopt automation as well as its overall success:

1. Technical Feasibility: Will it actually work for your specific business case? 
2. Cost of Developing and Deploying: Straight up hardware, software, hosting, maintenance, and training costs.
3. Labor Market Dynamics: The supply, demand, and costs of human labor.
4. Economic Benefits: What savings or increased revenue are you seeing from the increased throughput and quality along with labor cost savings?
5. Regulatory and Social Acceptation: Is everyone really ready and willing to accept automation?

Alexander Graham Bell once said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” Or to quote Wayne Gretzky, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.” We are at the perfect intersection of capital and looming labor scarcity today. What should you be doing right now to position your company to perform when we’ve conquered the pandemic and there’s a boom in business in general?

Now could be the perfect time to invest in automation – marketing or general automation too.  Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments section below.  

Ready to automate or learn more about modern marketing? Contact us.

¹ Oxford’s English Dictionary, Via Google search 2021

² The American Marketing Association, 2017

³ InsITe Business Solutions: “How to Automatically Detect Product Quality Issues With an Affordable AI Solution”

⁴ Various sources; McKinsey & Associates