Emerging Electronic Media Vehicles - Internet & Web Marketing
Wayne Attwell - Senior Brand Strategist, Bold Horizon
Today's consumer and industrial buyer is faced with an incredible volume and array of marketing messages that are seemingly thrust at them from all angles. The choice of vehicles for promoting your products, services and offerings are growing by the day.
As each new medium emerges it places additional strain and pressure on the traditional media that were yesterday's 'king of the heap'.
What worked for us yesterday may not necessarily work for us today. The challenge for today's marketer is to identify new and innovative ways to communicate with their chosen market. But just who is that chosen target market?
The traditional way of determining your target market was to consider traditional demographic profiles static data such as age, gender, geographic location etc.
But today's consumer is a complex being and doesn't necessarily fit into the neatly defined box. More and more companies with marketing savvy are realising that they need to appeal to the emotional and personal interest side of buyers, a practice collectively known as psychographics or lifestyle analysis.
Consumer and FMCG marketers have been using psychographics and lifestyle analysis for a long time because they are selling to people in an individual capacity. But don't these consumers have jobs? Don't many of them also make buying decisions for their companies?
The traditional mass advertising mediums such as television, radio and print are struggling to achieve what the industry calls 'cut-through', in other words the ability to cut through the overcrowded and noisy messaging in the marketplace and be able to capture the attention of consumers and buyers.
To achieve any degree of 'cut-through', either the advertiser either has to have an outstanding advertisement that generates interest, perhaps due to its clever or catchy nature, or the product has to be so 'gee whiz bang' that you can't help but take notice of it.
Many great award winning ad campaigns have proven to be lame ducks when it comes to sales results, and the converse is also true - many pretty basic, low budget campaigns have generated outstanding sales results. There is no magic formula.
Marketers around the world are considering and using advertising vehicles outside the traditional mediums and are focusing on the basic principle of more personal interaction with their market and customers.
There is no question that internet and online advertising is fast becoming a major force in the promotional mix. Through interactive websites, subscription-based e-zines, opt-in email marketing campaigns, sponsored search results on search engines, paid-for banner advertising and website search optimisation and new media vehicles, marketers are able to reach and interact with their target market in a way that traditional media could never provide.
In the same way that traditional media can be categorised by demographic and psychographic profiles, the new emerging electronic media vehicles are also maturing to the stage where they too can be clearly targeted in the same way.
Website optimisation
As a starting point, your own website is a good place to improve your interaction with your target market and customers. You should get a professional web or internet marketing firm to optimise your website by addressing the usability and navigation, page layout, structure and page content to ensure that visitors remain within the site for the maximum amount of time and find relevant information.
By also optimising the Meta tags, HTML code and other technical aspects of the website, you will appear higher in search results, generating more qualified traffic to your website. In addition, an optimised website will load faster and generally deliver a more enjoyable experience for visitors.
Google AdWords & other paid-for web advertising
Anyone who owns a website will testify to how difficult it is to achieve a search result on the first page of a search engine such as Google. In fact you may never achieve this.
One way to ensure that your message or website is seen on page 1 is to buy Google AdWords or Sponsored Links, giving you a guaranteed spot at or near the top of page 1.
This is achieved by buying keywords, so that when searchers type your selected keyword into Google and the search results appear, your listing will be seen prominently.
One of the other benefits of this form of advertising is that you can set your budget and once that is used up Google will stop presenting your link.
This form of results-based advertising can be very cost-effective compared to traditional media, where you pay regardless of whether anyone even sees your advert.
In addition to buying search keywords, you can also purchase banner advertising space on many popular websites. This allows you to target your banner ad on websites that target the same market profile as you do.
Of course, there is no guarantee that visitors to these sites will pay any attention to your banner or click through to your site. Clever design and 'stand-out' headline copy on your banner will improve your chances of click-throughs.
Banner advertising is a numbers game. You can buy thousands of impressions which may sound great, but the click-through rate is very low. Your click-through rate may only be small percentages of percentages, which may not even convert into sales.
Cost and availability can also be an issue, with the popular sites like TradeMe, Xtra, NZ Herald booked up well in advance and commanding high prices.
You'd be well served consulting with a professional web or internet marketing agency if you think that any of the emerging electronic media and internet marketing vehicles may be suitable for your company.