Is it any wonder that the last four major programs rumbling through the corridors of Camarès have heavy print components? Is it any wonder that the major thrust of many of our clients’ 2011 marketing plans is to go to trade shows/events/conferences and actually meet prospective customers? No. Having ridden the waves of Paid Search and Social Media since the early 2000‘s and discovered an unstoppable increase in pricing for paid clicks across all search engines and social media advertising there is no ROI left for mid-sized businesses in online marketing.
Did I just say that? I did.
Online advertising has quickly lost its promise. Why?
1. It over promised.
2. Google trained us all NOT to use Google. With a poor user experience (half a dozen tries to get close to the answer you needed) and dozens of vertical competitors. Now if you want to buy something you got to your brand name store with a smart online presence. If you want to get an answer for your homework, you go straight to Wikipedia. By pass Google, go direct. Why pay for search ads?
3. Facebook devalued the meaning of friends. Having snookered millions out of personal information, its ads simply do not return sales. Why? Facebook is boring. Most folks are self-censoring their posts or using FB for businesses and professional reasons. Dull Dull Dull! Facebook may have buckets of personal information but if users don’t use the service its got bupkis.
And all the misguided venture capital backed offspring of Google/Facebook: Foursquare, Yelp…you name it, are now twisting in the wind. Its not just the recession folks, we would have arrived here without it, it just would have taken more time to get here.
What are the indicators? Google is advertising about advertising on Google. Let me repeat that: Google is advertising about advertising on Google. Let that sink in. Oh, and they are not advertising about advertising on Google ON GOOGLE. No, they are advertising in print, on television and at trade shows.
And that brings it all back to Face Time: a true measure of a prospective customer’s engagement with your company, your brand is if they take the time to meet you face-to-face. And the value of that interaction is far more impactful than anything else you can do as a company.
What happens next? Online marketing will become far more complex and demanding: the place where those face-to-face relationships are tethered until the next face-to-face encounter.
That is the next chapter in online marketing. Stay tuned!
