I Can't Hear A Word They're Sayin'

If you use any genre of advertising to attract new prospects, your world is upside down. The popularity of TV, Radio and Print is on a slippery slope. Response to commercials and ads has slipped further. Some blame it on technology like digital video recorders, iPods and satellite radio. You should blame it on the Internet—fast becoming the best place to do business despite a dot.com stumble just a few years back.

That cyber behemoth, World Wide Web, is the marketplace of smart business people. They know mass media doesn’t cut it any more. You have to be direct in your marketing approach. The Internet is the direct marketing king. In fact, the medium that was known mostly for the mechanized words, “you’ve got mail”, topped 100 billion dollars in sales for 2006. That’s $100,000,000,000! You know, more than the Gross National Product for most smaller countries in the world.

Fighting for survival, Radio, TV and Print companies are yelling at you louder and more often trying to be heard above the din of sameness. We don’t listen. We can’t.  We have become like Harry Nilsson in his ballad Everybody’s Talkin. Here’s what he said in the refrain, “everybody’s talkin at me, I don’t hear a word they’re sayin, only the echoes of my mind”.  We’re there. We’ve exceeded critical message mass. Too much comes at us too fast and furious. We’ve tuned out. Our attention span is gone.

The Internet, with its pop up blockers and spam filters, looks like a haven. It is a place where we can decide who talks at us, for how long and about what.  In fact, we initiate the process by seeking out meaningful information rather than being sought out. We are the hunter, not the hunted. We’ll evaluate a sales pitch on our own time.

The Internet is gold for business, if it harnesses the power the right way. To do so, you have to forget all of your past chest-thumping braggadocio copy writing, outrageous, impossible to prove claims and other trickery. The Internet surfer is too smart for that. He can compare you to 50 or 5,000 like-minded businesses. Be straight forward, stand up and explain what makes you different in clear, easy to understand language.

Web measurement tools provide the feedback that will tell you if you’re just taking cuts or hitting a home run with your cyber audience. The testing and feedback software available now allows you with pinpoint accuracy to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns. Information like this was only dreamed of by old school ad execs who wondered privately if their campaigns ever really hit the target.

With very little exception, your advertising vehicle of choice is the World Wide Web. Your audience is already segmented. They are hungry for your offering and will come and find you. If you’ve done your job right, they will become long term, loyal customers.

Smaller business owners have no business in the mass media arena. Response rates to those ads are predicted to continue falling. It’s too crowded, provides a poor return on investment and no one can hear a word you’re sayin’.