As consumers’ media choices multiply and fragment, many in our industry fear an increasingly complex media landscape, a higher degree of difficulty in reaching prospects, and a big challenge in capturing attention. And they’d be dead right in identifying these issues and being concerned about dealing with them.
As consumers’ attention increasingly skips across media channels from television to social networking, to online entertainment and news, to RSS feeds to mobile telephony, to interactive outdoor, we marketers face the real possibility of not being where the eyeballs are and even if we are, then not making a persuasive connection with them. We’re now dealing with individuals who are often on their Facebook page, listening to a live radio feed, shopping online and ‘Twittering’ all at the same time!
It’s like trying to get an A.D.D. child to stop what they’re doing, listen to us and then change their behaviour based on what we say. It can be done but it takes a great deal of specialist skill.
But like most complex problems, and in tune with Occam’s Razor, the best solution is often the simplest one.
In this case, it’s a one word solution.
Relevance.
A powerful, relevant proposition put to most of us will be quite compelling most of the time. Then, deliver it in the right place, at the right time with the right approach and you are probably going to make a meaningful connection. Do it in a thoughtful way which engages the prospect and it’s going to work even harder.
For example, why would an eBay shopper consider listening to a message from an online retailer? They’ll probably listen in the first place if they’re served up a product message in the category they’re browsing, when they’re browsing. But, when the key message of free delivery is served up to an audience who are only too aware of the costs of shipping products that are purchased on ebay, then they’ll really take notice.
So, what’s happening out there right now is that the media is continuing to fragment into smaller and smaller pieces, but that actually provides an incredibly exciting opportunity to finetune more and more relevant messages to tighter prospect clusters. Relevance reigns and affinity is close behind. A pretty powerful combo.
There is no doubt that this environment is more complex, more time consuming and more difficult to plan and manage. But the opportunity to connect highly relevant messaging, often in the form of entertaining dialogue, is undeniable.
This is exciting. This is a massive opportunity for all of us.
Fragmentation. Bring it on!
This article has just given me an idea! The next time I sell an item on Ebay, I’m going to add the web address to the short video on Youtube, (that i will make), of me showing my business and product. Thanks