Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

August 1, 2013 · 8:26 am

Horns

Business took me away for a hotel stay last evening. As you might know, Rancho Deluxe, better known as the home office, is located in a pretty quiet suburban town. Some random deer sneezing is about as loud as it gets in terms of external noise.  Living in a city is different and last night’s stay reminded me of when we lived in Manhattan. It’s rarely quiet.

Car horn symbol

(Photo credit: net_efekt)

The sound that seems to dominate is that of horns. Car horns, truck horns, construction horns. All day and most of the night, their incessant sound can drive you nuts until you learn to ignore it. Which is, of course, the business point.

Too many brands use their marketing messages much as a driver uses a horn. Think about how you use your car’s horn.  There are the friendly little taps to let someone know you’re there and to come out to the car.  There are the intense, lean-on-that-sucker blasts to tell the moron texting that the light has changed and to get moving.   Despite its simplicity, the horn can send a lot of different messages, all of which are intrusive and attention-getting.

Marketing is like that too.  Some brands are still treating their audiences like the line of traffic in front of them.  They blast away even when it’s obvious that the horn will do no good.  How do you react when a driver does that to you?  I don’t react well.  Than again, you learn to ignore it.

Consumers have learned to ignore car horn marketing.  The harder you slam away, the less chance you have to get them to pay attention.  Using car horn tactics in channels such as social media can do way more harm than just the apathy caused by ignoring your messages.  Your inept marketing can be held up for ridicule, much like the dope that’s too busy reading his email to drive.

Horns can be lifesavers – alerting another driver you’re behind them as they back up or making sure a pedestrian is aware you’re coming, for example.  If they’re abused, however, they’re just so much noise and serve no purpose.  We need to make sure that our marketing doesn’t fall into that trap.

You with me?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , ,

July 25, 2013 · 10:22 am

A Peek Over The Native Horizon

Sometimes you can get a glimpse of what’s coming over the horizon and I think I got one of those this morning.  I was catching up on some reading and came across a letter that the FTC sent out.  It was directed to search engines but I think it’s a harbinger of things to come as the digital ad business gets more deeply into content marketing and so-called “native” advertising.  You can read the letter here but in summary it says that ads in search results must be clearly identified as such:

Advertising

Advertising (Photo credit: Wrote)

Search engines provide invaluable benefits to consumers. By using search engines, consumers can find relevant and useful information, typically at no charge. At the same time, consumers should be able to easily distinguish natural search results from advertising that search engines deliver. Accordingly, we encourage you to review your websites or other methods of displaying search results, including your use of specialized search, and make any necessary adjustments to ensure you clearly and prominently disclose any advertising. In addition, as your business may change in response to consumers’ search demands, the disclosure techniques you use for advertising should keep pace with innovations in how and where you deliver information to consumers.

That’s why you see the yellow background, for example, on Google search results along with it saying “ads related to (whatever the search term is)”.  The point is for consumers to be able to distinguish results that someone paid to make prominent vs those that would otherwise rise to the top.  Makes sense.  The tail end of the letter begins to talk about this same principle as it manifests itself in social and mobile (and voice search as well!).   Which got me thinking.

Content marketing done well is a beautiful thing.  Hopefully you all consider this blog a good example of someone putting our content that’s informative and engaging.  My hope is that this will lead you to email or call me about working with you, so I think in part that makes this an ad.  If I ever write anything that I’m paid to put in here, I’ll disclose it (although I probably won’t do that in the first place).  That’s content marketing – using content to sell.

Native ads are a bit more insidious.  It’s about the creation of content that’s supposed to be useful and interactive like content marketing.  Someone defined it as any type of advertising where the placement appeared to be appropriate except it’s much harder to identify as an ad.  When an article is about cats and is really an ad for a retailer, that’s a problem.

I think it won’t be long before rules are put in place to crack down on this.  How will the FTC stop fake reviews, articles such as the one above, and other forms that don’t disclose they’re really ads (which might call into question the validity of what’s in the article)?  I’m not sure but I know it won’t be as thoughtful as if marketers figure it out for themselves.

What do you think?

Enhanced by Zemanta

3 Comments

Filed under Consulting

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 22, 2013 · 8:48 am

Liar Liar

The phone rang the other day and it was someone asking me for more information about the services I can provide. That’s not really unusual. Sometimes they’ve read the screed, sometimes they’ve seen my business website, or sometimes something from a past life – an article, and interview, or another client – will send them my way.  I’m thankful for those calls – some turn into business and each is an opportunity to learn about another perspective on the business world.

The call I got the other afternoon was much like many of the others.  It was someone  – Mary was what she said her name was – who had seen my site and wanted to know more about how I could help them.   I asked about their business and they said they were selling shoes.  We chatted about the differences between selling online and offline, about website optimization, content creation, and analytics.  It was a pretty typical chat and it went on for 10 minutes or so.  Typical, that is, until “Mary” came clean:

So we’re a marketing company too and I’m wondering if maybe we can work together because our services would fit well with the ones you offer.

My response was about what you might expect.  Yes I do on occasion team up with businesses that offer services that I don’t but no, I can’t work with anyone who begins our relationship with a lie.  Then, I hung up.  But it got me thinking about how many businesses do just that – sometimes without malice, sometimes on purpose.  We engage with potential customers under false pretenses, promising to solve their problems when our primary motivation is self-enrichment.  We might think a little hyperbole is OK as we’re selling and maybe it is.  But lies aren’t.

In this case, I don’t have a clue what this woman was thinking.  Why would anyone want to continue the dialog after you come clean?  But it’s a great example of what NOT to do.   Do you think I’m being unfair?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under Reality checks, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , ,