MARKETING IN THE NEW MEDIA
Holly Berkley
Self-Counsel Press
(a division of)
International Self-Counsel Press Ltd.
USA Canada
Copyright © 2012
International Self-Counsel Press
All rights reserved.
Introduction
When this book was originally written only a few years ago, business owners and marketing executives were only just starting to realize the power new media marketing strategies could bring to their business. CEOs and company executives were just beginning to step outside their corner offices, take down the corporate walls, and open themselves up to the public on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media channels. Customer service teams were just starting to leverage new media channels like text messaging, blogs, and live chat to remedy consumer complaints and provide real-time solutions. And marketing directors and creative teams bravely opened the door to their world by allowing actual consumers to create television commercials, submit ideas, and even become brand ambassadors on sites like YouTube.
At the very core, marketing in the new media revolves around catering to today’s consumer’s demand for control. Control over the information they receive. Control over when they receive that information. And control over how they can respond to it.
Opening yourself and your business up to the public through new media channels can be intimidating and in some cases even frightening! It can mean putting pieces of yourself out there, online for the entire world to see … for good or bad. No matter how daunting it may feel be to get started, participation in the new media world is no longer an option for business owners, it’s a requirement. Whether you want them to or not, consumers will be using new media strategies to find information about you, whether they are sharing feedback about your product on an industry blog, or posting a review on their favorite shopping portal. As a business owner or marketing executive, you also want control. And in order to stay in control of your reputation, brand, and messaging, you need to be part of the online conversation.
Throughout this book you will read a few case studies and “lessons learned” from companies that jumped into the new media space without adequate forethought, resulting in some brand-damaging results. However, you will see even more case studies about companies that have leveraged new media successfully … so successfully, that the efforts literally helped catapult them ahead of their competitors, gain more customers, and in one case, even helped to win the US presidential election in 2008.
Now more than ever marketing teams and business owners understand the importance of seamlessly weaving elements of new media into their marketing mix.
This book provides an introduction to combining traditional and new media effectively to strengthen your company brand. We’ll take a close look at case studies that combine television, radio, and/or print marketing with Internet and mobile marketing elements to make a huge impact. We’ll look at how you can use Internet marketing to enhance your company image in the public eye (as well as combat any negative publicity). You will also learn elements of successful website design, and how to analyze web traffic reports and online customer behaviors on a deeper level, so you can make informed decisions about how your campaigns are performing and how customers are interacting with your brand. We’ll explore how to get a mobile marketing campaign (using SMS — the short messaging service to send text messages via mobile phones or wireless devices) off the ground and explore why big businesses cannot afford to ignore this new “uncluttered” advertising medium.
Finally, in this second edition of Marketing in the New Media, you’ll see a whole new chapter on social media (see Chapter 3). In this chapter, you’ll get insights, case studies, and even a few “lessons learned” on how to leverage yourself, your company, and your brand message through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others.
What Defines Traditional versus New Media Advertising Methods?
Throughout this book, when I refer to traditional advertising, I am specially talking about “offline” marketing activities such as radio, television, print ads, billboards, and other outdoor advertising. New media advertising includes promoting your company through new technology such as the web or through mobile devices such as cell phones or iPods.
1
An Overview of New Media Marketing
Ever since I can remember, television has been the leader in providing a medium for advertisers to get their messages out to the largest audience in the most effective way possible. However, since the creation of TiVo and other digital video recorder (DVR) technology, advertisers are growing increasingly concerned that viewers are simply skipping their very expensive commercial spots altogether. Combine this with the fact that traditional media channels such as television, radio, and print publications are no longer the only media choices for news and entertainment, and you may find yourself entering some unfamiliar territory to get your marketing message out to your target audience.
Today’s new media technology is allowing for more consumer control than ever before, giving the public complete control over what content they see and when they see it. As a result, this change in consumer expectations and media use has forced advertisers to rethink their entire marketing strategy. Big businesses can no longer depend on interruptive marketing tactics such as placing commercials in the middle of your favorite television show. Instead, advertisers have to think strategically about how to incorporate their marketing message into the content that potential customers are actively seeking.
Today, more than 1.4 billion (internetworldstats.com, March 2008 people worldwide are online, tuning in to their favorite websites, reading email, chatting online, listening to streaming music, playing games, and downloading videos.
According to a March 2006 study by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research, 78 percent of 133 national advertisers surveyed believe traditional advertising methods have become less effective in the past two years. Of those surveyed, 70 percent believe that the growing use of DVRs and video-on-demand services will further reduce and even destroy the effectiveness of the traditional 30-second television commercial. As a result, overall network spending has declined, while advertisers invest significantly more in Internet advertising opportunities (La Monica, March 2006).
This trend towards new media marketing has forced even the major networks — NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX — to build an online component into their advertising model in order to keep advertisers happy. All the major networks have now launched online components of their top shows in order to give advertisers a better return on investment — and to give results that can be tracked.
ABC is allowing users to download popular shows such as Desperate Housewives and Lost the day after they air on prime time. Although the audience may be smaller than those who tune into the larger screen, the new medium is already proving more effective to advertisers who have the opportunity to sponsor the entire online version of the show, as opposed to sharing the more crowded television version which typically includes eight minutes of commercials for a 30-minute show. The other benefit to advertising on the web is that users currently do not have the option to fast-forward through the commercials.
NBC announced they will be tying in custom web-based content with their most popular shows such as The Office, Law & Order: Criminal