Future of Marketing & Advertising
Once, things were very different; marketing and advertising was easy. You could buy TV, Radio and Newspaper and reach almost every living breathing human in your market area with a designated frequency.You could add a direct marketing piece and an email campaign to cover all your needs.
It was easy then.
But now; not so much.
Viewership and listenership in traditional media channels is down. Newspaper readership is DOWN in historic numbers. Email readership is down.The winner of your customer’s time and eyeballs is the Internet and specifically, social media. The time your customers are spending with ink and airtime are decreasing as tweets and online conversations are growing to the tune of an average of 4.6 hours a week with such sites as Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Linkedin.com, Flickr.com, etc. And, the audience is migrating to smaller screens with the proliferation of tablet devices and smart phones.
Right now in real-time, there are over 110 million people using Twitter. And 80 per cent of them are interacting with Twitter on a mobile device! With the forecast for social media interactivity and mobile search together to erupt in 2011, it’s clear that your marketing strategies must be able to take advantage of the approaching groundswell in social media.The biggest issue facing a company searching for help with their social media is that of finding someone that is actually more than just a user of social media. Being a ‘super user’ of social media sites is not the equivalent of being a competent social media marketer.
Creating a marketing offer implies there is a compelling message for a target group of customers and an intended objective and action the company wants them to take. This implies that the company developing your social media plan actually knows something about creating a marketing message. It’s important to find a resource that can determine your customer’s social behaviors and preferences, the social media technologies they use and prefer.
It’s also important to find someone that can help you join the conversation on your customer’s terms.When marketing was easy, top executives set the strategy and marketing objectives. The marketing department or your agency created the marketing messages and then they were distributed through just a few very effective channels. Leads were generated and the sales department closed the sales.
Today, it’s much more complicated. Those tight media channels have morphed, some have multiplied and some have even disappeared. Many have actually been replaced by online communities. Now instead of your potential customer learning about your product from your tightly controlled message delivered in tightly controlled media channels, they are more likely to learn about the features, benefits and PROBLEMS from your previous customers, distributors and online communities that are focused inyour space.
But still; even in this morphed, entropy laden and chaotic media environment, you must still create marketing messages that are both compelling and offer value to your customer. These messages still need to generate leads. Your story has to be compelling in order to break through the clutter and reach the online communities that want and need your products.
The market is having conversations about you and about your products and services; shouldn’t they be having conversations with you as well? Shouldn’t you be influencing their conversations? Contact Us and get into the game.
