Advertising adversity in the age of uncertainty

Advertising adversity in the age of uncertainty

There’s never been a more confusing time to promote your business.

The advent of the Internet and the claims that surround its advertising sites, the changes in newspaper readership and television viewing are fuel to your reasonable uncertainty.

Newspaper readership is falling so you’re reaching a declining and older and declining demographic. Not that it’s bad, they have the money after all. So the press is good if you’re selling cars, real estate, funerals or retirement villages. What is frustrating is that your ad only appears in print but doesn’t make it to the papers on-line edition, which has a growing audience.

TV viewership are down by 10 per cent and more. Netflix and its coterie are growing in popularity. The other factor of course is time shifting: viewers prerecording shows and watching them later while skipping your commercial.

Not that it’s all bad news. As Russel Howcroft of Network Ten recently wrote, “ Each day 15 million Aussies watch TV, and 85 hours of broadcast is watched each month compared to three hours on a tablet and four hours on a mobile phone”. Based on those stats it makes TV the most powerful media, even Google and Facebook advertise on it. But if you buy a spot in a major rating program and when it’s rebroadcast online … why does your commercial not appear?

Radio is a great immediate media. It’s in your customer’s cars, it’s there throughout a working day. However the new programming style of slotting hundreds of commercials in each ad break works against you being heard.

Smart sponsorship strategies and careful placement in programs is the answer. Which leads us to the Internet. The new grab bag of unknown quantities that have reached record share market prices but have yet to turn a reasonable profit. Here conflicting data finds a warm and welcoming home. On their side they can tell you they have hundreds of algorithms that will identify your target. On a cynics side you’d have to ask why an ad on a well-known site only receives two clicks for every 10,000 appearances of your brilliant promotional effort. As a mate told a client who was boast of 480 clicks on his website: “ Yeah mate, one spot on ‘Australia’s Got Talent’ and you could have reached 480,000 people”.

If you are a young and impressionable marketing person who bought a big Internet campaign that doesn’t appear to be working, don’t despair. For a mere handful of coins you can hire a ‘Click farm’ that will get you 100,000 or a million clicks. These nasty digital dodgers even invade reputable sites just to escape the algorithms that are set to defy them. They do this to maintain the appearance of reality in an unreal environment.

Yes you do need a Google listing; after all it’s the new Yellow Pages. And yes you must have a consumer friendly website that informs, rather than just sells products.

Outdoor posters, in-store events, public relations, letterbox drops all have a function in your company promotion, in fact the blurring of choices presents a multitude of opportunities.

The key fact is not to start at the media available but to look closely at your most desirable customer.

  • Who are they?
  • What do they want (that you can afford to provide)?
  • Where do they live?
  • What do they like doing/watching/listening to?

If you start with your customer the marketing decisions will be less uncertain.

If you want to learn more I am speaking at a Movers & Shakers Event called “Conversation with a MadMan”. Click here to learn more.

To learn more about other corporate or networking events in the Hunter region, please click here to view our Event Guide.

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