The Internet is making traditional advertising obsolete because now anyone can read about your business anytime, find you through social media and write about their customer service experience with you.
In this article will be outlined some of the ways in which the Internet making traditional advertising obsolete. By advertising we mean, specifically; paid ads in magazines and on TV for products and services such as restaurants, hotels & spas, plumbers, schools and book stores.
Previously, before the Internet became so all pervasive, if you had a bookstore in Minnesota you had to depend on;
1. People walking into your store off the street or
2. That word of mouth might spread or
3. You might place an ad on TV or in the papers.
Of these 3 options, 2 are almost completely passive and out off your control. While you can affect what the effect of your word of mouth advertising is by giving the best customer service and always having low cost goods but high quality produce, you can't force people to go out evangellising about your store. The only way of actively and successfully seeking out more business was to advertise.
If you did advertise, you would have to consider where to advertise. A bookstore in Minnesota doesn't need a nationwide campaign, no-one is goiing to travel interstate for a bookstore, most people probably won't travel to the next town even, so local advertising is the way to go. Now, consider, do you spend a lot of money on a TV ad that will reach many homes in your district but will be very expensive and you have no guarantee tha those watching like reading? Or do you place a poster ad in the library and some arty coffee shops, where everyone is literary but there are much fewer people seeing your ad than the TV spot? The choice is partly quantity versus quality and often the decision came down to price.
Now, in the digital era, you have a different set of choices and the emphasis is back on word of mouth.
Now, the bookstore in Minnesota has these choices:
1. People walk into the store off the street or
2. That word of mouth might spread or
3. They might place an ad on TV or in the papers or on the internet or
4. They strongly push their business FOR FREE online, using reviews and word of mouth.
If the Minnesota bookstore puts their business online with a website, makes a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a YouTube Channel, a Pinterest board and a Google+ hangout then they are ready to successfully advertise for free as well as creating a real time, interactive, responsive customer service.
If that Minnesota bookstore puts a computer in their shop, on their counter, then when someone comes in, browses, chats and buys a book the customer is invited (in a friendly way, without pressure) to use the computer to 'Like' them on Facebook, then the chances are, you willl get a 50% pick up rating. And those 50% now have access to all your updates, events and offers, coming to them in their daily lives in a relaxed and social online environment (Facebook).
You could add a tagline to receipts 'Follow us on Twittter @MinnesotaBookstore' and then you get lots of followers on Twitter because people who still go to bookstores instead of using Amazon are going because they like bookstores, the joy of browsing through physical categories, chatting to the assistant, having a coffee in the reading corner, so they will be enthusiasts and likely to want to connect online as well.
Speaking of Amazon, why not make those titles available online for when your customers can't get to the store? As familiar high street stores go under in difficult eceonomic times, anyone who isn't modernising and at least adding a technological aspect to their business are putting themselves on the extinction list.
And finally, the real way that you can get the very best quality advertising (i.e word of mouth and recommendations from friends) can now be done and optimized online. Think of TripAdvisor, a sort of Yellow Pages for restaurants and hotels, where diners and guests leave public feedback that others check when looking for a place to eat or stay, TripAdvisor has become the equivalent of the New York Times Theatre critic, able to close a Broadway show with one scathing review.
TripAdvisor has over 60,000,000 unique visitors a month! A month! Eating has become an experience to critique. Backpackers can check on the hostels in a city before deciding rather than relying on tour guides who may be showing you a place owned by their brother rather than the place next to the Taj Mahal.
Because social media is so conversational and chatty, people are communicating all the time about what they like and don't like in the world. The more positive reviews of your store, the more customers you will get.
In the Minnesota Bookstore, an assistant goes the extra mile to find an old catalogue for a customer and has it hand delivered to their home. On the receipt are the store's website, Twitter and other social media. The catalogue is exactly what the customer wanted. They go on twitter and tweet '@MinnesotaBookstore thanks so much for all your help,can't believe you found it.#lovebookstores'. Can you ask for a better endorsement? They the customer, unasked have praised you in print, online, forever. You can retweet this, favourite it, add it to recommendations on your site and better than that, all your customer's followers have received the same message! They have done the word of mouth quality advertising for you, to all their booky friends, for free.
This is a wave swelling right now, 60,000,000 unique TripAdvisor visitors a month, remember? 1,000,000,000 tweets every 3 days. 2,500,000,000 status updates per day on Facebook in 2012. Everyone is talking and sharing and communicating online in a way that has never happened before, everything is being discussed, including your business. So get involved now and don't be left behind.
In this article will be outlined some of the ways in which the Internet making traditional advertising obsolete. By advertising we mean, specifically; paid ads in magazines and on TV for products and services such as restaurants, hotels & spas, plumbers, schools and book stores.
Previously, before the Internet became so all pervasive, if you had a bookstore in Minnesota you had to depend on;
1. People walking into your store off the street or
2. That word of mouth might spread or
3. You might place an ad on TV or in the papers.
Of these 3 options, 2 are almost completely passive and out off your control. While you can affect what the effect of your word of mouth advertising is by giving the best customer service and always having low cost goods but high quality produce, you can't force people to go out evangellising about your store. The only way of actively and successfully seeking out more business was to advertise.
If you did advertise, you would have to consider where to advertise. A bookstore in Minnesota doesn't need a nationwide campaign, no-one is goiing to travel interstate for a bookstore, most people probably won't travel to the next town even, so local advertising is the way to go. Now, consider, do you spend a lot of money on a TV ad that will reach many homes in your district but will be very expensive and you have no guarantee tha those watching like reading? Or do you place a poster ad in the library and some arty coffee shops, where everyone is literary but there are much fewer people seeing your ad than the TV spot? The choice is partly quantity versus quality and often the decision came down to price.
Now, in the digital era, you have a different set of choices and the emphasis is back on word of mouth.
Now, the bookstore in Minnesota has these choices:
1. People walk into the store off the street or
2. That word of mouth might spread or
3. They might place an ad on TV or in the papers or on the internet or
4. They strongly push their business FOR FREE online, using reviews and word of mouth.
If the Minnesota bookstore puts their business online with a website, makes a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a YouTube Channel, a Pinterest board and a Google+ hangout then they are ready to successfully advertise for free as well as creating a real time, interactive, responsive customer service.
If that Minnesota bookstore puts a computer in their shop, on their counter, then when someone comes in, browses, chats and buys a book the customer is invited (in a friendly way, without pressure) to use the computer to 'Like' them on Facebook, then the chances are, you willl get a 50% pick up rating. And those 50% now have access to all your updates, events and offers, coming to them in their daily lives in a relaxed and social online environment (Facebook).
You could add a tagline to receipts 'Follow us on Twittter @MinnesotaBookstore' and then you get lots of followers on Twitter because people who still go to bookstores instead of using Amazon are going because they like bookstores, the joy of browsing through physical categories, chatting to the assistant, having a coffee in the reading corner, so they will be enthusiasts and likely to want to connect online as well.
Speaking of Amazon, why not make those titles available online for when your customers can't get to the store? As familiar high street stores go under in difficult eceonomic times, anyone who isn't modernising and at least adding a technological aspect to their business are putting themselves on the extinction list.
And finally, the real way that you can get the very best quality advertising (i.e word of mouth and recommendations from friends) can now be done and optimized online. Think of TripAdvisor, a sort of Yellow Pages for restaurants and hotels, where diners and guests leave public feedback that others check when looking for a place to eat or stay, TripAdvisor has become the equivalent of the New York Times Theatre critic, able to close a Broadway show with one scathing review.
TripAdvisor has over 60,000,000 unique visitors a month! A month! Eating has become an experience to critique. Backpackers can check on the hostels in a city before deciding rather than relying on tour guides who may be showing you a place owned by their brother rather than the place next to the Taj Mahal.
Because social media is so conversational and chatty, people are communicating all the time about what they like and don't like in the world. The more positive reviews of your store, the more customers you will get.
In the Minnesota Bookstore, an assistant goes the extra mile to find an old catalogue for a customer and has it hand delivered to their home. On the receipt are the store's website, Twitter and other social media. The catalogue is exactly what the customer wanted. They go on twitter and tweet '@MinnesotaBookstore thanks so much for all your help,can't believe you found it.#lovebookstores'. Can you ask for a better endorsement? They the customer, unasked have praised you in print, online, forever. You can retweet this, favourite it, add it to recommendations on your site and better than that, all your customer's followers have received the same message! They have done the word of mouth quality advertising for you, to all their booky friends, for free.
This is a wave swelling right now, 60,000,000 unique TripAdvisor visitors a month, remember? 1,000,000,000 tweets every 3 days. 2,500,000,000 status updates per day on Facebook in 2012. Everyone is talking and sharing and communicating online in a way that has never happened before, everything is being discussed, including your business. So get involved now and don't be left behind.
