The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott reveals how the internet has transformed the world of advertising and public relations into an opportunity to reach niche buyers directly with targeted messages that cost a fraction of what big budget advertising used to cost. The average person gets bombarded with hundreds, even thousands of commercial messages a day and most of the time, they ignore them. At least I do anyway. Traditional advertising is so wide and broad that it has become an ineffective way to reach your customers. Big media advertising is still effective for products that have wide distribution and mass appeal; however, it doesn’t work for niche products, local services, and specialized nonprofit organizations. Traditional advertising focuses on interrupting a person and getting that person to pay attention to a message, whereas web marketing and advertising focuses on giving practical information at the exact moment, at the right place, and the right time a buyer needs it. The web doesn’t need to interrupt a person to get their attention, people Google the web and use search engines to visit websites to gain information about a product they are interested in and want to hear reviews about what other people have to say about a company’s product, not what the media has to say.
Scott provides an excellent perspective on the effectiveness of web advertising but still makes the point that big budget media advertising is still very effective for very large companies and very famous people. It all depends on the company and the products they are advertising to determine which method would work best. Basically, Scott states that there are easier and more efficient ways to inform your audience about your products and the web allows direct access to that. If a small company or average person has something to say, they media will not relay that information and nobody will hear about it. Instead, the internet provides the perfect medium to reach buyers directly. Best of all, it can be done for a very small fee if not, for FREE! To take advantage of the opportunities that the web provides, it is necessary to forget about the old rules of marketing and public relations and realize that one-way marketing isn’t that effective anymore.
It is important to understand that web marketing isn’t about flashy advertisements and cool sound effects but to understand the keywords and phrases that consumers are using to search for the content that they seek. Companies like Amazon, Netflix, and iTunes are perfect examples. You can search for any niche book, movie, or CD and get informed about what similar consumers also purchased. Most websites give people a place to search for information to solve their problems; however, it doesn’t offer them a place to browse for additional products. These three companies that I just mentioned understand that concept and even take it a step further. They begin to answer questions before the consumer even asks.
Since the focus of this book is on the new rules of marketing and PR I figured I should include Scotts new list:
-Marketing is more than just advertising
-PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience
-You are what you publish
-People want authenticity, not spin
-People want participation, not propaganda
-Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
-Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web
-PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It’s about your buyers seeing your company on the web
-Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. It’s about your organization winning business
-The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media
-Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content
-Blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate
-On the web, the lines between marketing and PR have blurred
Getting people to write about your products on blogs can be compared to getting your products an article on the front page of any newspaper. If you can get hundreds of bloggers to write something about your product, the combined reach can be thousands, if not millions of consumers. Old marketing and PR strategies focused on the wrong things such as getting advertising awards and such. Nowadays, successful organizations focus on news releases, blogs, websites, podcasts, and other content that draws visitors into considering the purchase of their products. Last I checked, winning an advertising award wasn’t the same as drawing potential buyers into the sales-consideration cycle.
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