The lifeblood of any business is marketing and advertising. If a business had the best product in the world since sliced bread and did not advertise it, there would be no sales which would lead to no business. On the flip side, if a business had a mediocre product with the best advertising campaigns and strategies to generate sales, then that business is successful because it is profitable.
In this article, I’d like to talk about a subject I am passionate about…advertising. More specifically, the future of advertising.
What I’ll cover here today is:
-Traditional advertising methods
-Future advertising methods
-How you can start advertising with “future advertising”
Before I get in to the meat of things, who is advertising for?
Advertising can be for various organizations such as:
-Businesses (ie: retail, online, consulting, service)
-Public figures (ie: politicians, celebrities, athletes, bands)
-Personal Brands/Individuals (ie: professionals: sales, lawyers, doctors)
-Organizations (ie: profit, non-profit)
I’m very familiar with advertising as I’ve been in sales and marketing since 2003 and have owned and operated several businesses. Prior to utilizing the internet and web 2.0 to advertise, I used traditional methods of advertising to market my products and businesses.
Some traditional methods of advertising include:
-TV
-Phone book
-Magazine
-Newspapers
-Direct mail
-Billboards
-Roadsigns
-Radio ads
Traditional advertising has worked brilliantly as it reaches the masses of audiences in all media sources. However…..it comes with a BIG price tag. I repeat…BIG PRICE TAG.
For example, a 30-second tv ad (or tv commercial) during Grey’s anatomy can cost $400,000! A 30-second tv ad during American Idol can cost $780,000! It get’s even better…a 30-second tv ad during the 2010 NFL Super Bowl was…..$2,600,000!!!!* I’ve never gone the tv ad route for my businesses (I think you know why). *Source: http://televisionadvertising.com/faq.htm
For radio ads, the creative development of the ad can cost $1,750 and running the ad on air can go from $3,000-$6,000 per week!** I’ve advertised through radio before and the return on investment was very low. **Source: http://www.strategicmediainc.com/radio-advertising-articles/radio_advertising_costs_how_much_should_i_budget.html
For phone book ads, it can cost $2,500 for a 1-inch space listing in Manhatten, NY and $92,000 for a 1 full-page ad in the same phone book!*** When I saw these numbers, I was blown away! ***Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/advertising/adsbytype/article83110.html
I think you’re starting to see a pattern here….it costs BIG BUCKS to use traditional advertising methods! In this economy, what business or organization has that kind of money to invest in to advertising? How many products do you have to sell to make your $2.6 million dollar ad from the Super Bowl back???
I know I’m blowing things a little out of proportion but the truth is, advertising is the lifeblood of any business and if businesses don’t have the money to invest in advertising in this down economy, what is the alternative?
Answer: SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING (This is where it gets exciting!)
Many businesses have already caught on to the social media trend but there are more businesses that have not.
Some think social media is a fad. Some think it’s just for kids. Before I get in to why social media and advertising in social media is NOT a fad and NOT just for kids, I’d like to define what social media is.
Simply put, social media is: media for social interaction.
There are hundreds if not thousands of social media platforms and websites today, but the 3 major players are: Twitter, You Tube, and Facebook.
Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read other users’ messages called “tweets.” Twitter currently has 190,000,000 visitors per month. In it’s infancy stage in 2007, Twitter had 20,000 “tweets” per day. In 2010, there are 65,000,000 “tweets” per day!**** ****Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
Here are some well-known brands that are using Twitter to advertise their business (note how many “followers” they have:
-The Home Depot –> http://twitter.com/homedepot
-Starbucks –> http://twitter.com/starbucks
-Whole Foods –> http://twitter.com/wholefoods
Some brands have tens of thousands of unique “followers” and their are some that have millions of “followers” that can see the latest news, promotion, or announcement within seconds when the administrator puts out a “tweet.”
How powerful is that? How much would you pay for that kind of advertising?
How much money do you think this advertising source will cost you?
Get ready……
FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You got it, it’s FREE to open a Twitter account and start interacting with others including your followers to share your marketing efforts by a simple push of a button.
How does that return on investment compare to traditional advertising.
Let’s move on to You Tube.
YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos.
In May 2010, YouTube is serving 2 Billion videos per day, nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined.***** *****Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/youtube
Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, BBC, Vevo and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.
The game changing element in this brilliant service is that one can get their message out to hundreds of millions of visitors per day by uploading a simple little 10 minutes or less video clip recorded from their laptop or home video camera. Imagine the possibilities that any small business owner or entrepreneur can promote their products and services via this video monster media!
One individual that is maximizing video sharing on social media networks, including YouTube, is Gary Vaynerchuk (http://www.youtube.com/user/GaryVaynerchuk?blend=2&ob=1). Gary is a serial entrepreneur that took his father’s local wine business from $2 million dollar a year business to a $50 million dollar a year business by exposing the business via social media video marketing. Gary has been offered over 40 different TV shows and HarperStudio has signed a seven-figure, 10-book deal with Gary. His first book, Why Now Is The Time To CRUSH IT! Cash In On Your Passion, was a best-seller and has taken the social media industry by storm. To get a copy of his book, visit http://goo.gl/ZRDad. All of this became available to Gary from simply branding himself on social media networks.
An example of a company using YouTube to promote their products and is Apple (http://www.youtube.com/user/apple?blend=1&ob=4) with 92,000 subscribers and over 3,000,000 channel views. Do you think their product videos helped sell some iPhones?
Another company marketing their brand on YouTube is CBS (http://www.youtube.com/user/CBS) with 250,000 subscribers and over 10,000,000 channel views. Do you think some of these subscribers started to watch CBS more when they’re channel surfing?
I’ll ask the question again, how much would you pay for this service to get your business exposed?
Get ready….
IT’S FREE!!!!!!! I could go on and on forever on YouTube but I think you get an idea.
Let’s move on to the third, which is my favorite social media network: FACEBOOK.
Currently there are over 500,000,000 active users that spend over 700,000,000,000 minutes per month in over 70 different languages!****** ******Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
With these startling statistics, businesses and brands are jumping all over this massive social media platform to engage in conversation with their prospects and potential partners. Facebook is the perfect platform to converse with current customers and prospects because you can get real feedback from real people and anytime there is an interaction on users’ wall post, it goes viral to their friends, and their friends’ friends, etc…
I’ve promoted products on Facebook and have made a significant amount of sales by simply building relationships and having conversations with my Facebook friends. My best month in sales via Facebook marketing was $45,984. To some that may be very impressive, to some not so much. To me, the return on my energy with Facebook marketing outweighs ALL of my traditional marketing methods in the past prior to social media marketing…hands down! Why? Because it’s fun, it’s viral, and it’s FREE!!!
Some brands that are blowing it out of the water by leveraging Facebook fan pages to brand themselves are McDonalds with over 3,000,000 fans, Coca Cola with over 13,000,000 fans, Starbucks with over 15,000,000 fans and our very own President of the United States Barack Obama with over 14,000,000 fans!
Imagine the power of these brands posting their thoughts or promotions on their wall posts and that post immediately gets viewed by all their fans and their fans’ friends and it goes on and on within seconds!
Prior to online social networking, the only way companies were able to talk with their prospects and companies were through one way mass media advertising via television, radio, and print ads.
Today, we live in a society where we as social beings can network and socialize with others and make friends all over the world from the comfort of our own home with the power of the internet.
I believe that our culture is going through a shift and business owners and entrepreneurs need to pay attention and act on this shift or it will pass them by!
To wrap things up, I don’t think traditional advertising is dead, however, social media advertising and marketing may soon replace the high-cost tv, radio, and print ads with F-R-E-E!!!!
Do you think traditional advertising is dead?
