Forget Advertising

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Old marketing models were built in a bygone era and today’s increasingly digital world demands new strategies.  Companies have to embrace the power of the mobile Internet.  They have to connect with their audiences—and this doesn’t necessarily require large production budgets and deep resources.  Useful information, providing value to your audience and authenticity are the new requirements for marketing.


Changing Landscape of Marketing.
Today’s consumers will never go back to a world again where they will be treated as one in a million.  The "new" content marketing is something bloggers and Youtube creators have excelled at, and it will replace the traditional, non-personalized ad for the masses.  For example a Youtube video about the top 10 things to know when applying for a mortgage as being far more effective than a large billboard or bus shelter ad, or one on Facebook about a real estate company.


Data and Customer Experience.
With websites, capturing every click of users, marketing can be designed to target our preferences. Digital data is far more powerful and valuable than ad designs and arrangements. Marketing professionals want to know how long people look at an ad as a measure of engagement. Do they skip it? Do they share it?  Online analytics can optimize the productivity of marketing.


Marketing in the Rapidly Evolving Digital Age.
In the past the journey from seeing an ad to becoming a loyal customer used to be “fairly linear and discrete.”  The consumer would watch a big ad for 60 seconds, then go into the store and buy the product.  Now, in today’s increasingly connected world, people are never far from the Internet, and so that journey is typically broken up into many tiny interactions—on the cellphone, then back home at the desktop, and even a week later when a customer wants to actually talk to a company salesperson.  Important for marketers is to realize that they need to be present at all those stages in the journey.  People seem to have far shorter attention spans in today’s world and marketing needs to adjust to that.


Think Like a Customer.
In addition to being a successful marketer, you are also a consumer of various brands. Wear that hat when you are interacting with fans and followers. You and I, and every customer on this planet, possess a “what’s in it for me” mindset. Keep this in mind and make your customers feel special – don’t just engage for the sake of engaging.  40 percent of brands’ followers on social are there for the discount, so they will want to continue to see that interaction, and will be more open to receiving a company's message if they occasionally get rewarded for it.


Mobile Phones Are Now the Only Screen That Matters.
Mobile is immediate and far more action-oriented. With mobile, 80 percent of mobile searches take place at home or at work, 75 percent of “conversions” take place within an hour, and 41 percent of searches are goal-oriented, according to the Google Canada/Nielsen 2015 Mobile Search Moments study.  And marketing specialist Frederic Gonzalo explains: "We tend to stick with what they know, i.e. print, radio or TV.  If this still makes some sense with radio and TV, there is a disproportionate amount of advertising budget going to print while mobile goes grossly under-represented..." 

Mobile fundamentally changed behaviour to be much smaller in nature and much more action-oriented.  Critical for marketing success is an excellent customer experience, without frustration, through mobile platforms.