This book takes readers through a 360-degree perspective of social media in businesses.
The demise of in-your-face advertising is readily available, to be replaced with what Facebook’s Paul Adams terms a kind of advertising that depends upon “many lightweight interactions as time passes.”
Adams is Facebook’s Global Brand Experience Manager, employment that allows him to invest the total amount of his day researching and designing better ways for businesses and folks to communicate and interact. Before that, he was a senior user experience researcher at Google.
Adams claims that to essentially reach today’s consumers, companies and brands will have to build relationships with them instead of simply grabbing their attention or utilizing disruptions as an advertising tool. Put simply, marketers ought to be progressive instead of aggressive, adding a fifth “P” — Participation — to the original marketing mixture of Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Similar to the way we develop friendships over a period, a whole generation of advertisers will have to plan their marketing scenarios around the idea of building relationships. We often meet new acquaintances through friends. We chat them up, maybe catch them later at a celebration with other mutual acquaintances, discover we’ve similar interests, and, before very long, we’re all packed up and off on a weekend ski trip together in Vermont.
We ought to build our relationships with clients and customers the same manner. And we are able to begin that process by subtly promoting our brands in passing — as an aside to a bigger discussion or conversation. Like Adams says: lightweight, not heavyweight. With the advent of the internet, there’s so much information out there for all of us to absorb therefore little time to soak up it. Because of this, the simplest way to introduce services, content or suggestions to consumers will be seamlessly, naturally and subtly through word-of-mouth interactions.
Adams believes, as I really do, that within a couple of years, the web will have to evolve to be more personalized to your own requirements. Websites have to contain information that’s more highly relevant to our very particular wants, desires and needs. This personalization — fostered by a social fabric that’s woven through the entire user experience online — must seamlessly greet visitors with information regarding what their friends and associates are watching, reading, recommending, commenting on and more. Further, it will proceed to replace random display ads, pop-up messages or banner advertisements. Those direct — “heavyweight” — ads will fall by the wayside, like so a great many other obsolete processes and technologies.
Adams goes as far as to state heavy-handed commercial content doesn’t sit well with consumers because it’s not part of true to life. While I wouldn’t go that far (think Clint Eastwood’s “Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial), I really do think that personalized interactions — especially ones that reflect a trust and a willingness to hear one another’s opinions — will go quite a distance toward sealing the offer.
Do you consider traditional advertising is here now to stay or coming out? Tell us why in the comments section below.