Local business development professional Richard Bergér presents the final in a seven-article series designed to help Long Beach businesses successfully market themselves in a depressed economy.
4:00pm | As the world continues to shrink to fit your mobile phone screen and while you innocently search the web, a silent war wages on in the background of the Internet. Marketing battles rage among advertisers and their business clients, promotional skirmishes continue over market share, over mind share – that is, a share of your mind. It’s Advertising’s Armageddon: The Battle for Gray Matter.
The forthcoming articles in this series will introduce you to the most current, affordable and effective strategies and tactics that will help you succeed in today’s mean and lean market place. Tools and techniques that you won’t find at today’s agencies or marketing firms; you probably will not have even heard of them. But, they’re out there, helping other businesses grow – and you’ll be able to learn about them because you read the lbpost.com.
By some estimates, today’s consumer receives over 5,000 advertising messages in one form or another, each day. 5,000!
In one month, the average person will be bombarded by 150,000 ads, banners, commercials, billboards, flyers, circulars, direct mail offers, packaging messages and so on. Brand messaging is even integrated into your favorite sports programming – right there in the score-box area and on your kids’ cereal boxes. This doesn’t even factor-in the notion that 40%of all Internet activity is now taken place on mobile devices. Metrics on advertising reach and return in this new domain are still in their infancy, yet promise more targeted results than all other channels.
The battle to occupy a part of your brain is big business. Very big.
Meanwhile, costs for goods and services to consumers rise – in part, so that the ever-increasing advertising campaign fees can be paid. This is because the advertising agencies misunderstand two critical factors in today’s marketplace:
1. The new marketplace strategies
2. Individual consumers tactics
The external pressures placed on traditional agencies to be more effective have reached critical-mass. Traditional agencies don’t understand the current marketplace and their clients are demanding better results. So agencies recommend that their clients advertise more frequently and in more places. Yet, the irony of it all is that the more advertisers advertise; the more consumers ignore them. Ad agencies step-up their efforts and create more elaborate attempts to persuade consumers and consumers learn to deflect these attempts because they are, quite simply, meaningless to them.
Agencies and their clients alike are discovering that things aren’t working either. Client turn-over and staff-churn at today’s agency is rampant; where clients and employees rarely stay longer than 18 months at any one agency.
On the flip-side is the reverse-gentrification of the market; wherein the barrier to entry for the fields of graphic design, web design, advertising, copy writing and the like have been driven to all-time low’s. Now, your friend’s brother’s nephew does that, right? Or, perhaps, your IT person handles your website and online marketing. Maybe your receptionist or secretary handles your direct mail efforts. Nevertheless, your social media presence, blog, or e-newsletter – all updated and distributed regularly.
Consequently, agencies are downsizing, moving offices and attempting to “reinvent” themselves by changing their names to include words like “full-service”, “interactive”, “new media” and other clever descriptors in an effort to reposition themselves in the shifting landscape. It’s an out-of-control Tower of Babel situation that has already begun to implode advertising agencies around the world.
Advertising, as we’ve known it, is going the way of the Dodo Bird and the the Caribbean Monk Seal.
The Death of Advertising and the Birth of Post-Apocalyptic Messaging
Along with the extinction of advertising agencies will also come the death of the concept of advertising as we know it – and so, too, the death of the word advertising itself. In the aftermath of advertising’s death, among the rubble and ruins of the agencies of yesteryear, has arisen a phoenix-concept. An ideology that is intelligent and therefore not ignored by consumers. A concept based on a fundamental premise of social value. A two-way socially intelligent messaging proposition that helps both: the businesses that want to reach consumers and the consumers that want to be reached by these businesses.
In a sea awash with advertising and marketing ploys, it’s critical to cut-through the noise and connect with consumers.
A socially intelligent message connects a business with consumers in a meaningful way. It provides value, in one form or another, that enlists and compels the consumer toward an action that supports a perceived need in some area of their life. Fun-and-games marketing tactics aside, this premise narrows the field of effective techniques down to a mere handful. At the root of this nexus of effective techniques is the message itself. In fact, the message IS the message. Ironically, in today’s marketplace, it is what one says and how it is said that prevail in consumers’ minds; not necessarily what you do, that matters most. While this may essentially be contrary to popular belief, in messaging, it’s the kernel of all advanced strategies today.
The ways and means by which consumers look for, consider, and ultimately purchase goods and services from your business are changing right now. Traditional methods are quickly being replaced with more efficient, more engaging and more extensible ways of messaging that connect with consumers.
It’s not your father’s market place anymore.
Next time; Performance Art: Embedding and Distributing Your Message via Real-World Linking. I’ll show you how to link a piece of paper, or clothing, or flyer to an Internet site or other destination on the web.
Richard is co-founder of the digital business solutions firm ASTRALCOM, LLC, a published author and an avid socio-political marketing fan. Previously appointed to the Presidential Business Commission and recognized as California Businessman of the Year, Richard’s primary business focus is assisting clients achieve success through effective social intelligence messaging and customer experience management. Richard encourages your comments and feedback. He can be reached at 562.240.2114, via email through the lbpost.com at [email protected], or by posting your comments below.
Disclosure: ASTRALCOM is an advertiser of the lbpost.com.