What is the right channel for my product? Where is the best place for my ads? Should I be mostly on Facebook? There are a million questions for which you will get an equal number of answers. You will get advice on which channels are hot. People will try to sell you programs and services to reach your customer. In fact, when talking marketing tactics, you’ll get so much input it’s almost useless.
If you ask people starting businesses where they think they will be successful in finding new customers, most will say social media, but ad spending was only 23% of all ad dollars spent in 2015. Television is still the dominant media platform with 39% of the dollars. What about print, radio and billboards? This is another 26% of ad spend. If the SEO and AdWords were enough, you wouldn’t hear or see ads for websites and mobile apps in these other channels, but you do.
This explosion of channels has fragmented the marketplace by income, race, educational experience, sports, personal interests, politics and marital status. The list goes on and gets more granular. What can someone looking to launch into this environment do to have a chance at success? Hint: “If you build it, they will come” is not one of the options.
Dispatches From The Front 