The fly on the wall – he’s sitting there looking at me. He’s thinking, why would someone leave the comfortable constraints of traditional marketing? What’s wrong with print? What’s wrong with Radio, TV, Outdoor.
The real answer is nothing. There’s nothing wrong with traditional advertising. It still works (so they keep telling us). We’re all still humans and these mediums still get the message across. But the problem is that a few small things have changed. I’ll pick on just two points today:
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1. People have more choice.
In South Africa, as in the rest of the world there are more magazines and more channels to watch on DSTV than ever before. What once was a mass market is now very tightly fragmented into niche segments. Which as the Fly keeps on wanting to say: “is better because the now diversified media more closely addresses multiple niche markets.”
“Fly you have a point,” I say before continuing “the natural evolution of multiple niches is the eventual splintering into… yes… individual segmentation. That holy grail – giving the individual exactly what he or she wants… you see… Mr Fly… digital marketing can transcend traditional media’s new niches and can segment down to the specific individual.
It can (over time) morph itself into what the customer wants, the way the customer wants it, based on that particular customer’s personal need… and all this so seamlessly that not even a sly fly like you would notice it.”
2. Marketers are being held accountable.
The fly is rubbing his greasy paws together. With stretched marketing budgets in South Africa the question is how do we get the best value? How do we measure value? Do we use the usual metrics? How many people saw the advert? How many readers subscribe?
But the thing that always made me uncomfortable was how do I know. “Like really know”. If anyone actually thumbed to page 49 and read my advert. Engaged with my brand. Showed a friend the advert.
“Mr Fly, close your filthy ears a minute… to tell the truth, in traditional media we don’t really know if someone read the advert. SO we tell our boss or FD or whoever it maybe that’s hassling us like a fly on the office wall: “the research was audited and approved by So and So who are the industry body what what and it’s all true- 10 000 people do indeed buy that newspaper. And that is as deep as the research goes.”
You see Mr Fly, with internet marketing services we can prove that someone read the advert because they clicked on something in the advert based on what the advert said. Simplistically put: we can count every single click and prove that when we say 1 000 people read the ad, a 1 000 people did actually read it.
And that Mr Fly is why marketers are choosing to leave the comfortable constraints of traditional marketing for digital marketing in South Africa. Click on this link to learn more about how you can measure a digital marketing agencies performance in terms of how they are helping your business.
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