Are you engaging your audience?
Is the web a place for entertainment or a place for information? The answer of course, is both. We go online to check our email, play some mind numbing game, check our bank account, look-up answers to mundane trivia, research products and services and of course keep up to date on all the latest in celebrity mishaps.
So then, why when it comes to online marketing do advertisers neglect so many mediums. Why are brands not entertaining while they are informing? There are literally dozens of ways to get your message across yet most advertisers utilize only a handful. The king of these as of late is SEM and SEO. Many advertisers we have spoken with over the past couple of years swear that SEM/SEO is the only online marketing they will do now, since it is the “only one that works”. They have tried the rest and they just don’t work as well. To that we say; of course not.
SEM is standard pull marketing, the consumer is coming looking for you when they are in the lower half of the buying funnel (another blog entry all together). They are ready - or getting pretty close - to buying a product and now they need to figure out where to get it. Or they need to do just a little bit more research before they can convince their wife that the big screen TV they bought 3 years ago is now out dated and nothing more than an oversize boat anchor.
So how do you get consumers to that end of the buying cycle? By getting your brand in front of them and relentlessly trying to convince them that when they need a new widget, that only ABC Widgets will do. There are a number of clichés for doing this, throwing a wide net, having a shotgun approach. But, remember; a cliché is such for a reason; it has some truth behind it. You rarely know who exactly your target is and where you are going to get them at their most influential. Sure we have demographics and personas and we have a good idea of our most common audiences, but in reality when it comes down to it, everyone is different and buys for different reasons.
For a hundred years Madison Avenue has been doing a fairly good job at this in traditional media. Some *ahem* very targeted magazine buys, some drive-time radio slots, a few spots during the hottest network shows and maybe some inserts in the local Sunday paper. The point is, offline, clients seem to get that they need to be in front of their prospects, no matter where the prospects may be.
But online, it’s different story.
YOU TOO CAN BE RICH! All you have to do is take this templatized shopping-cart-ready website and start selling all that crap in your garage. Don’t worry people are going to be coming in droves just to buy your collection of cat clocks with eyes that move on the chime.
The truth is, it’s never that easy. For the average product/brand just building a website is not going to get you too far. Building a mediocre website will more than likely only hinder your efforts. Online you need the total package. You need a top-end, stellar, effective website that gets your guests to do what it is you want them to do; and of course you need the traffic to actually visit the site.
Which leads me back to the question of how do you engage the consumer/client/prospect to not only remember your brand but also be so inclined as to visit your website or stop into your retail location and actually contribute to your bottom line?
Anyway you can.
Maybe it involves building a branding game that does nothing more than entertain someone for 5 minutes before they email it on to their co-worker. (Hey, it just went viral!) Perhaps it’s a microsite that has 25 product trivia questions. Or maybe your company has been around for ages so you build an interactive time-line of what the company was up to when Roosevelt first took office or Hawaii became the 50th state or the Berlin wall came down. Heck, maybe it’s a man-in-the-street video that tries to get off-the-cuff reactions to your product. The strategies and tactics are different for every product or service, but the idea is the same - a full campaign that evokes a strong association and emotion; “resonance”. Get in their heads and stay in there. And the only way you are going to be able to do that is by constantly and consistently getting your message in front of your audience where your audience is when they are receptive to your message.
So sure, be at the top of Google or Yahoo or Bing when they are looking for your product, but also be there before they even know they need your product. Give them a reason to interact with your brand, give them a reason to engage.
Antidote X, the full service Interactive marketing agency that maintains this blog can help you define your full interactive marketing campaign to develop destination sites that deliver conversion results, create online vehicles that engage your audience to interact with your brand and ultimately drive home the traffic. You can find contact information for Antidote X at http://www.antidotex.com/contact/.
So then, why when it comes to online marketing do advertisers neglect so many mediums. Why are brands not entertaining while they are informing? There are literally dozens of ways to get your message across yet most advertisers utilize only a handful. The king of these as of late is SEM and SEO. Many advertisers we have spoken with over the past couple of years swear that SEM/SEO is the only online marketing they will do now, since it is the “only one that works”. They have tried the rest and they just don’t work as well. To that we say; of course not.
SEM is standard pull marketing, the consumer is coming looking for you when they are in the lower half of the buying funnel (another blog entry all together). They are ready - or getting pretty close - to buying a product and now they need to figure out where to get it. Or they need to do just a little bit more research before they can convince their wife that the big screen TV they bought 3 years ago is now out dated and nothing more than an oversize boat anchor.
So how do you get consumers to that end of the buying cycle? By getting your brand in front of them and relentlessly trying to convince them that when they need a new widget, that only ABC Widgets will do. There are a number of clichés for doing this, throwing a wide net, having a shotgun approach. But, remember; a cliché is such for a reason; it has some truth behind it. You rarely know who exactly your target is and where you are going to get them at their most influential. Sure we have demographics and personas and we have a good idea of our most common audiences, but in reality when it comes down to it, everyone is different and buys for different reasons.
For a hundred years Madison Avenue has been doing a fairly good job at this in traditional media. Some *ahem* very targeted magazine buys, some drive-time radio slots, a few spots during the hottest network shows and maybe some inserts in the local Sunday paper. The point is, offline, clients seem to get that they need to be in front of their prospects, no matter where the prospects may be.
But online, it’s different story.
YOU TOO CAN BE RICH! All you have to do is take this templatized shopping-cart-ready website and start selling all that crap in your garage. Don’t worry people are going to be coming in droves just to buy your collection of cat clocks with eyes that move on the chime.
The truth is, it’s never that easy. For the average product/brand just building a website is not going to get you too far. Building a mediocre website will more than likely only hinder your efforts. Online you need the total package. You need a top-end, stellar, effective website that gets your guests to do what it is you want them to do; and of course you need the traffic to actually visit the site.
Which leads me back to the question of how do you engage the consumer/client/prospect to not only remember your brand but also be so inclined as to visit your website or stop into your retail location and actually contribute to your bottom line?
Anyway you can.
Maybe it involves building a branding game that does nothing more than entertain someone for 5 minutes before they email it on to their co-worker. (Hey, it just went viral!) Perhaps it’s a microsite that has 25 product trivia questions. Or maybe your company has been around for ages so you build an interactive time-line of what the company was up to when Roosevelt first took office or Hawaii became the 50th state or the Berlin wall came down. Heck, maybe it’s a man-in-the-street video that tries to get off-the-cuff reactions to your product. The strategies and tactics are different for every product or service, but the idea is the same - a full campaign that evokes a strong association and emotion; “resonance”. Get in their heads and stay in there. And the only way you are going to be able to do that is by constantly and consistently getting your message in front of your audience where your audience is when they are receptive to your message.
So sure, be at the top of Google or Yahoo or Bing when they are looking for your product, but also be there before they even know they need your product. Give them a reason to interact with your brand, give them a reason to engage.
Antidote X, the full service Interactive marketing agency that maintains this blog can help you define your full interactive marketing campaign to develop destination sites that deliver conversion results, create online vehicles that engage your audience to interact with your brand and ultimately drive home the traffic. You can find contact information for Antidote X at http://www.antidotex.com/contact/.
posted by Interactive Trends at
12:11 PM
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