Often we often echo many reports and studies that tell us about the new media, trends, experiences and different marketing strategies that seem to be so fashionable between brands and companies. Data and data that draw us a scenario that sometimes can also create many more doubts, or even make us adopt a reserved position on everything they reveal.
Marketing and digital advertising have grown by completely changing many of the established paradigms. This is a reality. However, this does not mean that all emerging trends and formulas are adequate or actually fulfill the benefits they promise us. An excess of goodness that also conceals realities, truths and lies uncomfortable in a sector such as digital marketing and online, which seem to live its great golden age but where, of course, everything that shines is not gold.
Email marketing, social media, SEO, video marketing, content marketing, mobile marketing, etc … The range of techniques, media, tools and tools is very broad and diverse. In spite of this, its adoption and results can be determined by many factors. However, there are taboos of which few speak, or over which, for many, it is preferable that one does not know or speak too much.
Although we repeat on a permanent basis, what seems to be fashionable, what emerges as a trend, what promises, what is better for a strategy or for customer loyalty, are few occasions in which we address some of These uncomfortable truths.
The first one is directly related to the brands and their objectives. Let’s face it, brands are not meant to make friends. Brands are meant to sell and the more the better. No matter what it takes to achieve that end. If it is necessary to adopt a social position, they will. If it is necessary to make them believe that they are “green” or have greater awareness, they will do everything possible to appear, but never as a consequence or response to a real need.
The emergence of social media has made the media and social networks a new battlefield for brands. Yes, their presence in them has that same goal. And if the day came that selling or generating some kind of benefit through them was impossible, they would simply disappear from them.
We talk a lot about customer service, social relations, knowing the opinions and experiences of consumers, etc … and it turns out that things end up being much simpler in the end. The brands are panicking to the reactions of the consumers and as a consequence, they are forced to exercise a kind of surveillance to avoid major disasters.
But let’s go a little further. Recent studies reveal how less than 1% of online shopping decisions are influenced by social networks. And that in some of them like Facebook, users are disappearing tired of excessive advertising. Other reports reveal how 81% of users have stopped following a brand because of the lack of interaction and real communication with many of these brands. Obviously, it is not that the brands speak little or speak less, is that when realizing that their efforts do not serve to fulfill its main objective, to sell, then everything else is expendable.
This is not to say that social networks do not serve or can help in some way to sell or that even their exploitation can not come to benefit companies in other multiple senses. However, if it serves at least to question the true influence of this type of media and if the efforts made are worthwhile.
Now, the main thing is to talk about marketing and mobile advertising. The rise of mobile devices has raised this category to the top of the brand strategies. All to experiment and bet on this new battleground mass consumer users, where casually also these users manifest their stance reluctant to more intrusive advertising.
Mobile devices are changing many of the habits of consumers. Your way of investigating, comparing and buying more intelligently. Brand apps have proven that they can be really useful even when they just aim to generate greater brand awareness. This is Marketing, not advertising. And although many are now trying to make us believe that millions of banners reach mobile users, the truth is that neither are effective nor enjoy the pleasure of users themselves who ignore them as annoying and intrusive. All this without counting the high number of accidental clicks and many other factors that play against those who really intend to make mobile advertising a way to generate greater sales.
Something similar happens when we hear about the benefits of online videos. Their ads have become aggressive, incessant, inopportune, intrusive, etc … and many media no longer place them in front of noses with no way to avoid them, again and again, even always showing the same brand on which to End is born a kind of animosity and negative sentiment by its tired and reiterating form of want to remember his message. Meanwhile, smart brands turn to video to create interesting content that is viralized with great impact. All this without counting the increasingly popular reviews and demonstrations of products that both triumph in Youtube. Once again, marketing wins the battle for advertising.
And what about the display of online advertising? Now it turns out that it is not seen, that it does not work, that it does not serve to generate qualified leads. The millions of impressions of online advertising are no good at all, some say. Selling or buying bulk prints no longer works because it costs money. Now brands prefer to talk about leads and leave as advocates of the CPA for that they sell or do not sell the branding comes cheap, not to say free. Meanwhile, digital media suffer to sustain their business models. Then they will come and say that quality information no longer exists or that we will have to pay for it.
It is curious how brands or companies like Amazon or Spartoo are still betting on online advertising in its more traditional formats. The difference is that they do know how to sell. They have and offer what consumers are looking for and really need, and therefore, their well-optimized advertising ends up working, achieving a high percentage of effectiveness in their ratios. For those who do not have something interesting to offer or can not even differentiate and be competitive, perhaps the best option is certainly to stop trying.
Let’s stop believing the many panacea created as fashions to capture brands and advertisers. In this marketing, there are still lies and uncomfortable truths. The different media, channels and supports are there to know how to take advantage of them in an intelligent and strategic. Neither one is better nor another is worse. Maybe in the mix of the union is the strength, but do not think that to sell is worth everything they tell us.
