Posts Tagged ‘Advertising’
How Do I Get Your Attention?
Attention is a funny thing, kids are masters of getting as much as they need, but how do businesses master that same art without becoming annoying? Sometimes annoying works well for advertising campaigns, but do they win friends and influence people? Do they get your attention, or just your anger?
Some people, like me, can’t walk into a room quietly, we naturally draw attention to ourselves, probably because we are insecure or some other mental issue. I don’t know why it is, but it is. I love people, and I love helping them when I can, but that doesn’t get attention the way I would like it to. It might have something to do with my opening : )
I’m going to use me as the scape goat in this post, as an example of what some of us are dealing with. I hope it stirs some emothions in you and makes you think.
People and business are not the same, they have two different personalities and yet some of the same needs. When a person fills the role of business owner, they look at the world completely differently than when they are at home. OK maybe, but usually. The business owner, if they are doing well, tend to have healthy happy relationships with staff, and the staff reflect that out to those who are dealing with them. In a perfect world that’s probably very true, but not always the norm.
Every business has the same need, they want your attention, and those who figure out what gets your attention tend to survive longer. I’m generalizing, but you get the idea. So how does a business of one get your attention the same way a business / Brand or many people do? It still comes down to need doesn’t it. There has to be a need for me to look your way, and more importantly, a compelling need for me to find out more about what you are offering. Not all businesses need my services, they do, but don’t realize they do, why? Urgency. I may show you a tidal wave, but it’s not going to get here till 2014, I’ll wait and see mentality sets in, and well, you know what happens. So how do I get your attention?
I’m not a kid any longer, so I can’t get your attention the way kids do, and I can only cry wolf so many times before you take my work seriously, so what will it take? Why do most small business have a tougher time over bigger businesses? Probably because big businesses have more resources and can buy attention at a level small businesses or individuals can’t. It’s not a level playing field by those terms is it?
If it’s that hard now, what will it be like when another 3 – 4 billion people come online? If you haven’t noticed, we are moving away from the Bricks & Mortar style of consuming, we are buying more and more through our smart phones than ever before. That is going to increase, and it’s not going away as if it was a fad like Bell Bottom Blue Jeans.
My tag line should be, I SEE DEAD BUSINESSES! Why? Because most small businesses know the tidal wave is coming, if they don’t, they aren’t listening. It’s as if they are looking the other way, hoping it won’t actually happen. Fear is an immobilizing thing most of the time, but that doesn’t mean what I’m sharing isn’t real or going to happen.
You should be doing three things in your business right now, no matter what size it is, become social, become very mobile, and be prepared to serve a portion of the 4 billion people yet to come. So I ask you, how do I get your attention? The better question might be, forget about me, how do you get the the attention of 4 billion yet to come? Attention is the currency of our future, learn how to get it.
Where To Put The Toll Booth
The question of where to put the Toll Booth is being asked of me more and more lately, it’s a big subject and really can’t be covered in a Blog Post well, I’ll just share some thoughts for you to ponder. With the shift to an Open & Free Business Model, the confusion of the concept, the fear of losing control, and how to make new money from it are the biggest reasons to take your time and consider where the Toll Booth should be. Let’s consider some facts.
Today we have 1.7 Billion people on the Internet, in the next 3 – 5 years there will be 5 Billion people here online. Also consider that Advertising dollars are shifting to the digital marketplace, traditional advertising is dropping and digital is increasing. Print is down 18.7%, T.V. is down 10.1%, Radio is down 11.7% and magazine’s are down 14.8% in the USA alone. On the other-hand, Digital is up, HandHelds are up 18.1% and general Internet (Computer) is up 9.2% overall in the USA. These numbers are changing everyday, and these are taken from November 2009 statistics. With over 65,000 iPhone Apps on the market and more are being released daily, these apps are revenue generators that play a huge role in the Open & Free Business Model. A Toll Booth if you will.
The term Open & Free Business Model means a great many things, it’s access first before money, in a way it’s like the old GPL of Shareware model, you got to try it for 30 days and then you had to buy it. But today there is a difference, today people won’t tolerate paying for content in any of the traditional terms. Newspapers are trying get you to pay for content for access, how do you think that will go, I think they will rethink that if they want to generate new revenues.
The biggest issue I’m coming across is a thing called creativity, there is a mental block on how Open & Free is going to make money. Personally I think it’s not that difficult to figure out, but that’s what I do, I help businesses come up with new ideas on how to do that, to build something that can be implemented for the purposes of being ready for the new 3.3 Billion people coming in the next few years. The problem isn’t that it can’t be done, the problem is we have to unlearn and make a paradigm shift in how we view the world of business. I’ve quoted Gerd Leonhard many times, he once said, “the Internet is a giant copy machine, we now have to sell things that can’t be copied. Sell things around the content. Sell the packaging, sell the experience.” I’ve always believed that the experience I have in dealing with you determines the success of your brand. Business is not transactions, it’s interactions with people, and those people determine whether your brand is good or not based on the experience of dealing with you and your business.
If we must stop the model of copy to something that can’t be copied, we must look at a bigger picture, and that means changing the way we see the world. The Open & Free Business Model has nothing to do with technology, it is rethinking the placement of the digital marketplace Toll Booth. Some Bloggers have proven this model in part, offering good if not great content for free that you normally would have paid for upfront. That scares the day lights out of the business world, letting you decide before you buy means mainstream business has give up some control. It means they can’t guide you through the typical sales process of making say yes to a string of mini closes. They have to change how they think and ensure what they want you to purchase brings value and fills a real perceived need. They struggle now with where they make the money and how to ask for it. I’m generalizing of course, some understand but most don’t.
The bigger issues coming, what happens when we go to a single currency in North America, what happens if Net Neutrality comes to fruition, there will be another shift but not nearly as big as the Open & Free Business Model. This is not the same as Open Source but we can learn much from the GPL (General Public License) model.
The placement of the Toll Booth will most likely determine the amount of money you generate in the digital marketplace, but you need to understand how to determine that placement. You may not like the idea of an Open & Free Business Model, but what you may not see is that free gets you to a place where can ask to be paid. It will be quality over quantity, and it will also mean you are solving a problem and or filling a perceived need.
I have probably introduced you to, maybe for the first time, the thought of giving your content away for free and then figuring out how to make new money from that thought. There is far too much to cover for this post but you can read more about it here on my Blog by doing a search on the topic.
Owen Greaves Consulting is currently planning a 2 day workshop on the Open & Free Business Model, to help you learn how and where to put the toll booth in your Open & Free Business Model. If you are interested in this workshop please send me an e-mail or leave a comment for more information.
Attention Bloggers & Marketers
The Internets future is of great interest to me, I study some of the worlds smartest technology people because they see things differently than the rest of us. The Futurists are an interesting lot, they even cause me to chuckle now and then, but we need them because it forces us to look outside the box. I share and talk about the possibilities technology can bring, I care very much how it impacts society and our economy’s, plus I love looking into the future.
So I ask you Bloggers & Marketer’s, have you stopped to consider what and how the new economy is going to work, what it might look like, and how it will impact how you Blog and Market? Do you know what the New Economy is? There is and will be a New Economy, it will be The Data Economy, the New Content Economy. We will connect data to data, line to line, not web-page to web-page, this economy will set the table for a revolutionary way of doing business on the Internet. Google is ensuring this will happen, everything will be mobile and on the cloud.
We are entering a time where Command & Control will become Coordinate & Cultivate, where domination is out – and Collaboration is in. Where the current economic egoism no longer works, because now we are all connected, it breeds mediocrity. Mediocrity is what we have / had under the control model. We need to build an Ecosystem, where we freely, openly share & collaborate, with the right blend of sharing rather than piracy. Collaboration is and will be required to build in this new economy.
An entirely new way of thinking comes from being connected, Trust is the Key, Trust is the new currency. This trust will be developed over time, it will make or break organizations and indivduals with large followings and high levels of influence, but this trust won’t come easy. Advertising in the connected world has to be radically different, otherwise it will keep declining. We can no longer market on the Internet by yelling. Marketing needs to hit the RESET button and figure out how to function in the new economy.
Content today is copied, you download a PDF, an MP3 and what have you, it’s a copy. The Internet is a giant copy machine, if you disconnect the copy function, you disconnect the listening function. The fight to keep control of copies is a losing battle on this network, but how do we get the money from a network that can copy everything for free? We need to sell things that can’t be copied, the conversation is the sell. We need to sell things around the content, the packaging, the experience. Money is moving from the selling of copies, to selling the experience. After all, your Brand will be judged by that experience, if it’s bad, you will be out of business sooner than later. You can see the landscape is changing, the end of control is taking shape everywhere.
Social Media is a very human driven practice, it can’t be done with a single person, it just doesn’t scale well that way. Gary Vaynerchuk has shown us how hard it is to keep up and stay on top of all that is data, he won’t be able to sustain the demand on his time and become ineffective.
It’s important to state that Social Media is not about technology, it’s about a culture change, a paradigm shift, we have to get better at believing in the impossible.
We need to think about how we Blog & Market, re-write the books on how it’s done, because what we are doing is a diminishing return. What kind of experience do people have when they come to your Blog, and what kind of emotions are engaged when they see and hear your marketing messages? The power is now in the hands of the people formerly known as consumers, how will you engage them?
You’ve heard this message before a million times, you probably preached it over and over, but the real question is, are you one of the change agents helping shape this new economy? Have you studied what’s to come, do you know and see the indicators? The New Economy views content first as a service, then an experience – and only then (maybe) a product.
I know my voice gets lost in the noise, that’s OK. I know the Internet is a big place, and a very large network that dissects, crosses over and loops back, and some how we are supposed to find what we are looking for. Companies like Google are trying to filter the content and help us all get exactly what we want. But that my friends, is whole nother story. Filtering and curation are the keys to the next phase, and eventually we’ll find ourselves dealing with smart noise.
Are you paying attention, what do you see?
Advertising on Social Media Networks Like Twitter
It was and is only a matter of time before advertising hits Social Media Networks as a way of life, building a following or a Social Media Community means eyeballs to big business. Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and so on have built huge communities, within these communities individuals have built large followings. Large followings is taking on new definition every day as more and more people join all these Social Media Networks, the larger the following the higher the return for advertisers.
I decided to experiment with a new service called Ad.ly, you’ll see the banner ad to the right, they are holding a promotion right now to encourage you to try them out. I’m referring you!
The promotion is:
Make Money and Win a Macbook for Referring Friends…
If you want more information just click on the 1st Banner ad to the right and decide for yourself if it’s something for you. They assign an advertiser to your account and then you will be promoting that advertisers products or service. Most Bloggers are always looking for ways to make money online, if they say they aren’t, I would suggest if they suddenly got 1,000 bux a month because of it they wouldn’t turn it down.
Now the jury is still out on this advertising program on Twitter but at some point there will a saturation point because literally thousands will start companies to do the same thing. It’s SPAM at a nother level really, we all will be deluged with millions of Tweets and Updates pushing a product or service. It’s just a matter of time.
As I mentioned, I’m not sure how I feel about it but in order for me to speak intelligently about it I have say I actually tried it. So, stay tuned as I go down this trail, I will continue to write about the experience. Personally, I think you should find out for yourself rather than take someone else’s word for it.
Let me know what you think, is this a good thing, are you ok with these types of programs?
Do You Promote Your Blog Everyday?
I’ve been thinking about how much time a person or company should spend on Marketing / Promoting their Blog. Is everything you do on your Blog considered Marketing and or Promoting? I mean everyday you do things like branding, PR, adding content and making sure your name (company name / brand) is everywhere. Is there ever a time when marketing what you sell or do is too much marketing? I can’t imagine an executive ever saying we are advertising to much, we have our name out there too much we have saturated the marketplace with our Brand. If you do have someone like that, he or she probably won’t be there very long. I would rather have the problem of too much business and too much awareness than not enough.
Some of the tasks involved in marketing & PR today are changing subtly, because the rules are changing, now that Social Media has become mainstream you can’t just set it and leave it. You have to listen more than you do anything in todays new marketing environment. So, how much time should you spend listening? More than you are probably willing to spend time doing I’ll bet. If you aren’t willing to listen, how will you know what to do? How will you know when to do it?
So I keep asking myself, how much time should I spend doing PR & Marketing my blog? I think you should invest more time listening and then figuring out how you can solve what you just heard that day. So, do you market your blog everyday? How much time do you alot for that task?
Do you promote your blog everyday? I would love your input so please leave a comment below.