Offline, invisibility is a problem you can throw money at. Money to Interrupt and disturb your way into the attention of your market. There I am, reading the latest on Government’s “amazing plans” for economic turnaround or about Phillip Chiyangwa’s plan to become the next ZIFA Chairman, then boom, your full page ad is in my face – ” Cheapest Whatsapp Bundles on Earth -Buy Now!”. Maybe this time you can distract me from the news story, long enough to sell me something.
It doesn’t work as well as it used to.
Heck even in Zimbabwe, this
Interruption based marketing model is failing businesses more and more everyday. I hope you’ve got better plans for your 2016 Marketing budget.
You do right?
On Facebook, Zimbabwe’s most popular Social Media platform, the power dynamic is entirely different. Upside down in fact. This is why most corporates and the traditional ad agencies they use just don’t get it.
Not even close.
When the media is a social one, the people socializing, not the companies, have all the power. True, you can pay to boost your way into my news-feed, but unlike the radio I don’t have to listen to your interruption on Facebook. In a split second your boring, irrelevant ads are ignored. And the more l ignore you the more expensive I become to reach – or worse, now I can tell you to your face Just how much I hate your ads, and your product!
So you see, pretty as it maybe, your boring newspaper advertising just wont work on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. You can’t simply copy – paste from your offline strategy.
In a world where people see and spend time on only the things they care about, your content has to be more than just “professionally designed” or informative or even important …
It has to be AWESOME!
Awesome means irresistibly captivating, relevant and human.
Look again at that graphic I did for you up there … do you see the red “Booyah” spot? That’s what you’re aiming for.
If this sounds exciting, then you’ve seen how big an opportunity lies before you. Your competitors are fast asleep on this, still clinging on to the myth that only teenagers use Facebook. Still hoping that social media is merely a fad.
Wake up sleepy head!
On the other hand, if the transition sounds minor…like social is just another medium, then you haven’t understood a thing I’ve said. You haven’t grasped just how fundamentally different all this is to the old school marketing you learned when you were doing your marketing degree 5 or 10 years ago.
Going forward into 2016, you’re going to have to learn how to think in an entirely new and different way about your marketing- different even to the marketing that made you successful yesterday. You’re going to have to be more.
More human, and less like a corporate robot with formal, emotionless ‘corporate speak‘
More relevant, and less like you actually believe your company news or latest average product is something I even remotely care about.
More captivating and less like you’re intentionally tying to put me to sleep.
Today in Zimbabwe, we have a whole new generation of young working adults and parents who have never bought a newspaper. for them News is not something you buy. News is something you read for free on a website or in bite sized chunks on your friends Facebook wall. He is far harder to interrupt with ads. He just doesn’t have the patience or the attention span for it, and yet he is the future of your business. You can reach him though, effectively and profitably, but you’re going to have to be awesome!
Instead of interrupting the story he is trying to read, you’ll have to become the story he came looking for. That’s called being awesome.
Up for the challenge?
Very good one Mr Soutter, as always…does this mean you’re back to blogging? We missed you
Hi there Ray, yes…i’m back lol. Thanks mate,