Don’t Market like Miley Cyrus – Let Your 3D Parts Library Twerk For You

Miley’s Raunchy Stunt is an Inbound Marketing Nightmare

Marketers could make the argument that Miley Cyrus’s recent raunchy performance on the MTV VMA’s was an earth shattering PR move or a rebranding feat. But it was an absolute nightmare for Inbound Marketers (and our kids). Miley’s “performance” stood for everything that’s wrong with outbound marketing and why the old disruptive ways of marketing don’t work anymore.

Traditional “outbound” marketing is all about getting noticed, any way possible. It’s designed around interrupting and disrupting, pretty much, jumping up and down saying “look at me!” and “it’s MY party.” Old marketing is based much less on substance and much more on timing, shock and creating a spectacle to get attention.

Sure, Miley’s salacious stunts dominated almost every news site, online magazine or newspaper this week.

The real reason CNN ran Miley as the top story (same spot as 9/11 and killing of Osama Bin Laden)

You’ve probably seen the coverage or even watched the video (we’ll let you Google it). Miley Cyrus is this week’s new reigning champion of stealing the spotlight by taking her act to a whole new level of ridiculousness. She built an empire on her squeaky clean image, her Disney show and Hanna Montana music, but now the shine’s worn off so she’s got to reinvent herself.

The former Ms.Montana took the stage in a flesh tone bikini and spent the next 10 minutes shaking, gyrating and “twerking,” enough to make a seasoned MTV audience blush. (see Will Smith and family photo below).

The problem with this tactic is she’s not creating any value for her brand. For marketers, her performance was the equivalent of using an inflatable green gorilla to grab customer attention when they drive by (I mean she even had giant dancing fuzzy bears). It may get you some extra looks, but unless you have something your visitors need – it will provide no value to them and no new revenue for you.

If your company needs to boost sales in the 3rd quarter, do you think your CEO should buy some airtime to show off how well he can to “The Worm.” No.

Stop Disrupting and Start Building Relationships the Inbound Way

Savvy marketers who can’t “shake-their-money-maker” on MTV have realized there’s a better way to build their brand.  It’s called “inbound marketing”, and it’s based on forging a presence by providing value to your customers and online visitors. If you create reasons for people who need your product or service to find you, they will.

A very popular inbound marketing tactic for industrial manufacturers is to provide their 3D parts library online for visitors to download. Every day engineers and designers download and spec CAD models for their designs; otherwise they must redraw each component part in their design.

By offering the models within a 3D parts library or configurable CAD catalog, you are providing a tremendous value to visitors, saving them time and money. This is the perfect inbound content to offer your visitors and keep them coming back for more. Not to mention the qualified sales leads generated from each download.

What’s in it for you?

Your traffic will increase dramatically – you’re providing a service and visitors will remember that. You will also increase your marketing leads significantly, before downloading engineers will enter their email address and contact information.

Lead to Sale Conversion
With the increased traffic and leads from your online configurator, lead conversion will be your new primary objective. Make your customers love doing business with you – and they will come back again and again.

Engineer’s Buy from Companies that offer CAD models 

Download our recent survey showing how engineer’s choose who they buy from

Questions? Use this handy guide: “5 Ways to Remind Yourself – You’re Not Miley Cyrus” (Thank Goodness).

1) You don’t have nearly a decade dominating the “pink stuff” isle at the toy store. Miley’s alter ego, Hanna Montana was the biggest thing going from 2006 through 2011. You could walk into any toy store and buy a hundred pink colored toys that say Hanna Montana on them.

2) Your dad isn’t the Achey Breaky Heart guy. Yeah, Miley’s dad is Billy Ray Cyrus. I’m pretty sure he taught her a thing or two about disrupting and interrupting to get noticed.

3) You’ve never been spoofed by Saturday night live. Take it as a compliment.

4) Your dad doesn’t have this mullet. Yup it’s a doozy. Blue ribbon at the county fair.

5) You can’t dance like this. Sorry we can’t bring ourselves to put Miley’s dance on here – you gotta Google it yourself – but check out Elaine from Seinfeld. She’s got the moves.