Everyone knows conventional marketing. We’ve all watched TV and seen many ads. We’ve all listened to the radio and heard songs interrupted by jingles and messages. We’ve all had videos on YouTube preempted by pre-roll ads, or interrupted by them. We’ve seen billboards when we drive, and we’ve seen signs for businesses plastered on every piece of real estate available. We know it’s a battle for eyeballs.
Much of what we know about advertising is traditional tactics pioneered in the 20th century. An era of mass media beginning in mid-century showed the reach and power of well-crafted ads delivered to the millions. The invention and proliferation of the Internet, however, has changed everything we know and how we know it.
Modern marketing entails an understanding of the digital realm. There is no shortage of digital packages on which to spend marketing dollars. Pre-roll ads, native ads, tailored and targeted blogs, paid content, SEO-optimized content, localized search results, pay-per-click (PPC) ads to run on Google, Facebook promos or digital giveaways, social media management, backlinks, content syndication. The list goes on and on. To many, these terms are murky at best.
The simple trait all these methods have in common is better demographic targeting. Once upon a time, you made an ad for television or radio and broadcast it to everyone listening. It was an expensive buckshot approach that yielded questionable results but padded the marketing budget to appear effective. Sometimes you even got new customers doing that.
As our tools have gotten better and our targeting more effective, we can appeal ads to extremely specific niches of people. We can geofence ads to run in certain geographic locations, and we can choose to show ads only to demographics that might be statistically susceptible to clicking on them, and perhaps making a click-through purchase—the ultimate goal. The coupling of volunteered personal metadata on sites like Facebook and the user browsing history of Google means we can narrow audiences and targets with incredible, previously unparalleled precision.
We can write web content that speaks to specific users, and we can demonstrate the core competencies of companies by targeting keywords that align with users’ searches. The fundamental goal of marketing, attracting eyeballs, remains unchanged. The only difference is that we now have a much better idea of which eyeballs to aim for, and which might click on the content we show them.
Marketing in the 21st century is still as much of an art as it is a science. The proliferation of data and digital governance means we must sift through much more than we used to. To do marketing correctly in this digital age, a company like True North Technologies is your best bet. There simply isn’t time to do a full digital ad spend correctly in-house for the majority of companies. There’s too much to do, and too much to learn.
It also entails having interesting, thoughtful, relevant content for specific users. There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking on an ad only to discover it was entirely clickbait with little relevance to what you wanted. Sometimes you might also discover a shoddy product hidden behind a terrific commercial or ad. Sometimes it’s simply a clickstream trick to get you to a site for SEO or ad selling purposes.
Proper marketing entails making things people need. It means communication, and it means authenticity and trustworthiness. It means pairing people with the services and products they seek through common search engines. It means acknowledging the supremacy of digital and mobile search behavior, and fully utilizing a system’s UX to be findable and usable. It means giving customers what they want, and often showing them what they want before they even realized they needed it.
Of course, this tends to work well when coupled with a conventional marketing campaign of radio, TV, and print, but using just one or two things instead of the full spectrum, especially the digital spectrum, is just half the job. You’re more likely to intrigue a user, get their click, and earn their money if you repeatedly expose them to an attractive product or service. And your ad spend money goes much further if you know who you’re trying to interest.
Philosophically, marketing in the 21st century means inclusion. It means understanding a diversity of interests, demographic characteristics, lifestyles, and the incredible market of choice. It means recognizing the audience your product or service is for, and making sure you check the right boxes to interest people properly. In a world of Twitter and social media, it pays to not run tone-deaf or out-of-touch ads that offend or erase customers. The feedback loop, both positive and negative, is far quicker and decisive than at any other point in marketing and media history. You want a digital agency that is aware of such effects.
One thing remains universal of time or place: marketing has to be voice driven. It must speak to the company’s core competencies and values, and it must be true to the message and mission. To be authentic and trustworthy are the most important aspects, and to deliver that message in an engaging, thoughtful, usable way to the people who would find it most valuable is the entire point. You must connect with your audience. You must cut through the clutter, clickbait, and noise to send the right signal. You must be found, and you must be heard.
And your message needs to be worth hearing.
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