American consumers have more choices, more products, more services, more messages arriving from more media, and more digital conversations than ever before. Therefore, new product (or service) marketing has become a pandemonium. What’s a marketer to do?
As a result of this gluttony of information bombarding the consumer, most advertising is incredibly inefficient. Advertising in mass media generally reaches far more people than the potential customers you intend to reach. When CPMs were low, this wasn’t a major issue. A certain amount of advertising waste was a part of doing business. For over 150 years, marketers broadcasted their messages to the masses through newspapers, magazines, and later through radio and television. They tried to refine their potential market to the best of their abilities. Today, sophisticated marketers realize that what worked in the past is not working (at least not as well) now. It’s become apparent that we need a new approach.
Marketers want to know:
- What is the best medium to reach our market?
- What are our customers reading, watching, and listening to?
- How can we attract their attention, stop them from turning the page or changing the channel?
- How can we best tell them about our product, our service, our benefits, or our values?
Managers and marketers alike need to realize that the Web is rapidly becoming the most important marketing medium. They also need to realize that people don’t want to be sold; they will go out of their way to avoid commercials. Therefore, banner ads and pop-ups are not the best way to market on the Web. What people do want is news and information about the things they care about. They want to be able to find out about the things they care about right away. Community building is what marketers need to engage in.
The Social Web
The social web is the online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments, and opinions. It is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the Web. As opposed to traditional publisher-controlled media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television where the communication is overwhelmingly one way, social media such as blogs allow everyone to publish and participate in multithreaded conversations online. These posts can make or break personal, product, or corporate reputations.
The social web provides numerous opportunities for strengthening and extending relationships with all your customers. These opportunities include:
- Targeted Brand Building
- Lead Generation
- Partnerships
- Research and Development
- Employee Communications
Rather than talking at customers, you should talk with your customers. As a marketer, you should participate in, organize, and encourage social networks to which people want to belong.
