Integrated Marketing Communications And Joseph Kony Book Excerpt
This is the second excerpt from Chapter two of Integrated Marketing Communications and the Capture of Joseph Kony and how integrated marketing communications can transform the marketing that businesses do.
Consumers no-longer access the Internet just on computers as the huge growth in high-speed Internet connections and popularity of Internet-connected Smartphones (now 49% of all adult US males and 44% of adult US females according to 2012 Pew Research1), is booming. Traditional marketing that doesn't make use of this new technology is increasingly falling behind.
As a case in point, according to Nielsen2, 40% of tablet (e.g. iPad), and Smartphone owners in the US used their devices daily while watching TV. Around 42% of them are visiting social networking sites (a trend that is greater for women), and nearly 33% are checking sports scores or looking up information related to the TV program they’re watching. Just under 20% are searching on the Internet for information related to the ‘traditional’ ads they’ve seen.
Now, as per the example just mentioned, there is still plenty of traditional marketing that consumers are being exposed to daily on TV, radio, newspaper ads etc but consumers have been paying less and less attention to it. They're only paying attention to the traditional marketing that is relevant to them and gives them signs, incentives and/or links to further information that they can access quickly and easily.
This more often than not, can't happen through traditional marketing which relies heavily on the simple repetition of the same, standardized messages and one-way broadcasting. So, traditional marketing increasingly serves as a starting point for learning more about a product or service rather than the ‘end game’.
Traditional marketing has also been undermined by the huge growth in the numbers of businesses of every shape, size and variety over the past few decades cluttering the market place. The Internet has been a big recent driver of this as the cost of establishing an on-line business has fallen to zero. When that fact is combined with the ease of importing a huge variety of cheap products from China, it means that anyone can potentially sell products.
With such a massive range of product, service and business choices available it's no wonder consumers are standing back before parting with their cash. Like the basic economics of supply and demand, when there's an abundance of supply, demand lowers and consumers become a lot more selective.
This isn't helped by the short-term focus of traditional marketing on 'making a sale' when the vast majority of potential consumers simply aren't ready to buy. Also, on-line consumers are far more skeptical than off-line consumers due to the vast numbers of ‘sellers’ in one place and the lack of face-to-face contact. This further diminishes the effectiveness of using traditional marketing and particularly when integrated marketing communications are proving to be so cost effective.
In tomorrow’s post we’ll start on Chapter Three and discover exactly what ‘new marketing’ is. Follow along and feel free to comment, discuss or like us.