Marketing Speaker Claims All Media Is “Opt-in”
A big deal has been made in recent years about “opt-in” media. The argument is that the “old media” – newspaper, radio, TV, magazines, direct mail – are based on the idea of interrupting you. They call it intrusive. They talk about it as if you’re strapped to a chair and you’re forced to view it or read it or listen to it.
By contrast, the new wave is the Internet. You voluntarily “go” to a website to see what it has to offer. You click on a link because you’re already searching for specific information or the solution to a specific problem. You choose your social media. You only receive “tweets” from those you follow and you only get Facebook posts from those you have allowed as friends. All of this is what they call the opt-in media.
But it seems to me the similarities between the old and new media are far greater than their differences. And for the most part, it all boils down to “opt-in.”
Consider television. Since the invention of the remote, the commercials have pretty much been opt-in. You don’t like them, you change the channel. Not practical when you had to get up out of your easy chair and physically turn the dial (unless you had children of dial-changing age). With the advent of the remote, it’s as easy as your computer’s point and click. Maybe easier!
Same thing with radio. Nobody forces you to listen to a specific station or a specific type of programming. Nobody makes you stay station stable and listen to ads if you don’t want to. Push button presets on your radio give you options. Options, I might add, that you have preprogrammed in to match your specific tastes. Yes, the commercials “interrupt” the programming, but you do have options at your fingertips, just like the Internet.
Direct mail is often criticized as the ultimate interruptive medium. I don’t see it that way. In fact, I see it as one of the ultimate opt-in media. Yes, you get a pile of solicitations in your mailbox every day, but nobody is forcing you to open or read any of them. You thumb through the pile, open (or opt-in) the ones that interest you and trash the rest.
Email is exactly the same. Only you’re inundated with far more “junk email” than snail mail could ever deliver. They don’t make physical mailboxes that big. And don’t kid yourself. A lot of that junk email comes from sources you have opted-in, or asked for. You’re just like me. You get a lot of email from sources you’ve asked to receive information from, but you still trash it without even looking at it. There’s just too much!
The new social media is the same. Your network of friends and followers grows like a weed. But the way it works, you really don’t know probably half the people whose posts show up on your Facebook wall. And even among the ones you know, all the silly invitations to play a game or choose a personality or even discover that Sally Jones is headed for the hairdresser. I’m telling you, that stuff is far more interruptive and annoying than any TV commercial or snail mail envelope, if you ask me. (Or if you ask my wife. She is the most social animal I know and even she has said it’s a terrible waste of time and she’s given it up.) What obnoxious energy-suckers!
“Sure Jim, but what about search? That’s strictly opt-in.”
So what? Nothing new about it. So are the Yellow Pages. Only in the Yellow Pages, I may have a choice between a handful and a couple dozen vendor ads to evaluate and choose from. With search, I actually become overwhelmed by the choices. There are typically dozens to thousands of choices for even the most obscure categories.
And unlike the Yellow Pages, where I can quickly thumb throughout a collection of ads which typically, quickly tell me what the business does, on the Internet, I have to click on one link at a time, which takes me to a comprehensive website that often does NOT tell me quickly and concisely what I can expect from a company. I have to delve in to find the kind of info I want. Then, to check out another option, I have to back out to the search page again, click on the next link and go though the whole process again. I don’t call that efficient.
If you’ve read my recent piece on the death of the Yellow Pages, this may appear to be a contradiction. It’s not. The Yellow Pages are dead. The process has shifted to the net. This is an irrefutable and irreversible fact. And I’m not saying it’s bad.
All I’m saying is, the net is not the panacea it is made out to be. It is not easy. It is not convenient. It is not all it’s cracked up to be. And it’s “opt-in” nature does not necessarily make it better.
I’m not saying Facebook, Twitter, email and websites don’t have their place. I’m not even claiming they’re not the way of the future. They do and they are. But be realistic about what it is going to take to use the new media to make money. You’re still going to have to work at it. You’re still going to have to spend money on it. You’re still going to have to learn the ropes, and you’re going to have to keep learning them because the ropes have a nasty habit of changing on the Internet.
Yes, you must opt-in to marketing online. But it’s not an either/or game. Opting-in to online marketing does not mean opting-out of the traditional media. My bet is you’ll need to master both, to keep your customers opting-in to your business.
THE END
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based Marketing Speaker, Advertising Speaker, Marketing Coach, Sales Trainer, and Writer. His new book, How To Market Your Crap When the Economy is in the Toilet, contains 12 vital strategies for unclogging your revenue pipeline. Find it at www.marketyourcrap.com. Or email mail@ascendmarketing.com for info on local search optimization.
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