Advertising Is Dying
Traditional advertising is dying, while persuasion is alive and kicking.
Traditional advertising is dying, while persuasion is alive and kicking.
Advertising is on its deathbed.
If traditional advertising still works for you, I bet you aren’t really advertising. You’re persuading.
Before I explain, let me pose a question: What’s the difference between advertising/marketing and sales?
Truth is, they’re almost identical. Or they should be. The only true difference between the two is the ability to accurately measure cause and effect. It’s easier to fire an ineffective salesman than an ineffective ad firm. At least, it used to be.
Ineffective advertising has finally been exposed, and, like a vampire, it’s withering away under the rays of sunlight.
Where does the light come from? Web analytics. Web analytics is a cure for not only bad advertising but also bad sales. We can now measure the effects of offsite ads and online conversion. We can measure what actually happens rather than speculate. We see when email or banners are working but the site is failing. We know more about our customers, what they do, and in some cases why they do it.
Slowly, companies are getting wise to this ability to measure the buying and selling processes. Online, accountability is built in at every turn. Companies are posing questions about their offline campaigns. They’re losing patience with advertising and all its promises. It’s not that advertising is getting worse. Actually, it seems better and more relevant. It’s just too little, too late.
Why Traditional Advertising Is Dying
Sure, the Internet has a hand in taking advertising down. But there are other factors:
Persuasion: A New System for a New Generation
Old-school advertising can’t be resuscitated. The landscape has changed. Advertising must morph into something different. Advertising alone isn’t enough.
We must shift from the advertising/marketing/sales silo strategy to an all-encompassing customer persuasion worldview.
Architect a persuasive experience as opposed to broadcasting only what a company wants people to know. You’ll inject relevance into every customer touch point no matter where the customer experiences the company or where he is in the buying process.
Companies that best manage and coordinate the customer experience from first touch to post-sale are the ones that will succeed in the future:
Most of our work focuses on what happens when people arrive at their Web sites. Yet we find online persuasive efforts have a back-reaching effect on advertising efforts and a forward-reaching effect on offline sales efforts.
Online persuasion is a great breeding ground for relevant messaging and experiences. It can be used across advertising and sales efforts. In this respect, online marketers have a leg up over their traditional counterparts.
Do you persuade customers or shout advertising messages at them, hoping you can drag them kicking and screaming to your cash register? Tell me what evidence you’ve seen that advertising is dead.