Marketing, Web Development, PR / MNP Hoppal

Advertising is a common practice which attempts to drive traffic to websites, sell products, and generally create a need or want where there is none. For the most part, a niche product which does what it claims to do can be the driving force behind a company, with a good advertising campaign sending sales soaring through the roof.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours

Unfortunately, the age of advertising is dead. With AdSense becoming nothing more than a virtual tip jar for bloggers (I’ll click your ad if you click mine, etc.), many of us are paying for click traffic without getting the conversion rate typically found through genuine interest.

This isn’t about that, though. This is about why advertising is dead, and what you can do to save yourself from the sinking ship.

What happened?

You see, at least according to most marketers, during the golden age of television, all you had to do was create a drive to your product through advertising. This was usually done on television through commercials between shows or on infomercials at 3 AM. It worked well for a while. Unfortunately, this age is dead, as many people are desensitized to advertising, and most simply ignore commercials. There are a few with good entertainment value which still stick in the heads of consumers (Think Progressive’s Flo), but for the most part, it’s no longer a viable way to reach the mainsteam customer.

What else has died?

In addition to television commercials sinking, another thing has taken a dive: reaching the mainstream. This is no longer a good way to try to market yourself. It’s a lot nicer to imagine yourself in the typical American household. Unfortunately, people aren’t interested in things which apply to everybody anymore and by losing a bullseye, you miss everybody completely.

So what do I do?

Everybody’s talking about this new hip thing called “niche marketing.” Basically, you find a small demographic and pray that it pays well enough to keep your company afloat. This approach, however, has serious flaws. First, it takes a lot of energy to find a high-paying niche which hasn’t become overcrowded, and by the time you’ve finally found a good place, you’re in an incredibly narrow market like “bioinformatics” (whatever that is) or you’re selling solar panels made only of copper to corgi owners from Wisconsin. Before long, your market has become saturated and you’re in red ink, or worse, you gain money and everybody else has to come invade with their own products.

What can I do?

Well, the only way to get around these problems is to throw out what doesn’t work and embrace what does. If you’re running a blog, you cast a wide net to go viral and at the same time provide niche content which will attract repeat visitors. A common way of doing this is linkbaiting through list posts to reach the front page of digg (so passe).

If you’re running a company, the best way to attract traffic from the masses while still maintaining your niche value is to breed some sort of new idea or trend to catch on.

In other words, go viral, but keep your regulars happy at the same time. It sounds difficult (and it is — I’m still trying to perfect it myself), but it can be done. If you can generate word of mouth, that’s the best way to attract new customers. After all, if Miss Becky Butterhead likes it, I should too.