We are undergoing a tremendous shift in the development of technology. As consumers, we no longer do things in months, weeks, days or even hours! Our lives are now determined and ruled by moments, even micro moments.
Source: Micro-Moments – Think with Google
Life moves pretty fast! Isn’t that what Ferris Bueller said. The thing is, he said it 30 years ago. Yes, in 1986. That was before the widespread adoption of the internet in the nineties and life was moving pretty fast then! What about now? With the internet, smart devices, super fast broadband thats set to get faster and all the other fleeting minutes we have in life, it is time to think about the ROI on the marketing that a business does. I see so many businesses still paying for advertising in magazines. What is the ROI on that? How do you measure ‘eyes on’ your advert on page 132 of some magazine about whatever? Billboards! Another great invention for a bygone age. Passengers in vehicles today are, by and large not engaged with the road or the world outside them. They are using their phones. Actually so are about a third of drivers too! TV adverts? Hmmm! Leaving aside sports and news broadcasts, how many of us watch TV shows as per the scheduling of the TV station? No one! We watch TV on our time and fast forward adverts as they come on. On the off chance that the remote is too far from our reach, we will choose to look at our phones (because our phones are never more than an arms length from its owner at any given time). So here is the bold statement:
Most businesses today market like its somewhere between 1979 and 2000 or somewhere in the middle!
In 1998 we opened every single email that we received. Why? Because it was new and exciting. There was a 90% open rate on email marketing campaigns back then. Today you’re lucky if you get 2%, yet we still do email marketing as a basis for customer contact. Next bold statement…
It is time to start marketing your business in the year you live in!
That one is attributable to Gary Vaynerchuck, but I totally agree with the sentiment.
‘Think with Google’ has highlighted something that consumers are now experiencing, the concept of Micro Moments and they are the new battleground for brands to battle over.
How often do you receive marketing ‘literature’ (used loosely!) inside your phone/utility? You open the envelope, remove the bill and bin the torn envelope that the correspondence has arrived in, the envelope included for you to return payment (why do that? doesn’t everybody pay online?) and finally the marketing insert. Why do I mention this? Because thats what you do. Then you do the same thing for your business, seeking out a utility provider to stuff something into their envelopes but you expect others to act differently. Why? Think about that.
Cormac