Traditionally, when advertising and marketing was considered, we did not have much of a choice. Newspapers, Television ads and radio ads and our age old bill boards were the only options, of course after our very own ancient dhol beating announcer dude.
Problem was, me being online for more than half my life now never understood them. When I tried advertising my services a few years back, newspapers here in my place charged around $20 per day of advertisements which could contain less words than half a tweet(for those ignorant, a tweet is 140 chars!). A 5 seconds ad slot on most national TV channels in the country will run you around $20 minimum in off-peak times. Problem: But how do I know if the people I want to approach will read this paper or watch that particular television channel?
Fast forward to today. Internet is the next marketing channel. Wait, wasn’t it like that since the start of this decade? Yes, but the scene back then was advertising and marketing. Offers and advertising were pushed to the consumer. But in the last few years, internet is toying with the whole Web 2.0 philosophy and user interaction and social media were all the buzzwords.
With the advent of social, advertising and marketing is measurable in terms of visits, clicks, impressions, lead generations, conversions and sales. All your marketing campaigns make sense now in terms of “measurability”. Marketing ROI is now almost exact with internet.
They, the internet users are weary of online ads that promise the moon and give you bull excreta. They now believe friends and people who can recommend them stuff in the right time in the right place. An example that happend to me in January. It was a bad day trying to book a train ticket at IRCTC with all those timeouts and try again errors.
In around 60 minutes, I was a fan of Cleartrip and I have bought almost 95% of my train tickets from them since. It was a innovative marketing strategy and they will have my ticket purchases for a long time.
Social Media is all about Targeted Marketing, great results and happy customers and a measurable marketing ROI.
I respect marketers of the previous decade who were able to market with statistics like the TRP and others which make no sense whatsoever. With print and television ads, how can you reach the right targeted audience and how do you measure if they converted or if it is reaching the right people.
With the advent of internet, its Marketing 2.0 and I am really excited about its prospects. What is your view on internet marketing?
Leave a Reply