FlashPointLabs

Zack is a UC Berkeley graduate who grew up in northwestern Connecticut. Zack came to California to attend college, and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area – largely due to the abundance of early-stage and tech startups.

Zack is among a few marketers who recognize that Internet search has fundamentally changed the way we buy. Experts like Mark W. Schaefer, Gary Vaynerchuk, Marcus Sheridan, and Joe Pulizzi, agree: ads and brochures – seller-centric copy (companies talking about themselves, rather than offering help to customers as they search) – has never had less value than it does today. We all dodge ads. We avoid something like 7,000 ads a day.

Buyers begin their ‘Buyer’s Journey’ with search, and want to be left alone as they search. Just like you. Only at the very end of the Buyer’s Journey, when their decision is effectively (80%) made, do they want to see, read, or hear you talking about yourself in ads or brochures.

The irony of this is that we have never had more intelligence about what buyers want, where they go, and how they behave. Rather than interpreting the almost universal avoidance of ads and brochures as a problem, marketers typically apply technologies in ever-more-interruptive ways. In this way, marketers have weaponized marketing.

FlashPointLabs accepts the reality that buyers drive the sales cycle and seek helpful content as they research knowns and unknowns, as they include and exclude, as they consider fit and value, through the messy and wending process that is the Buyer’s Journey. The best a smart company can do is produce and offer that very content that buyers seek – content that is buyer-centric, for a buyer-driven sales cycle. We handle all marketing needs, but we focus on producing thought-leading, buyer-centric, content for buyer-driven sales.