Online Advertising... Why is it such a fight?
I work for an interactive agency, and I am wondering why it's so hard for clients to see the value in advertising online? Some see it, but others feel "it's nice to have a website" but don't honestly see the value or potential returns past the website. Has anyone else had to deal with this issue?
Tags: advertising, clients, fight, online
Views: 4
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mary Baum on -
Dealers do seem to be a breed apart.
On the one hand, I would have expected them to notice a drop in margins based on the fact that those 80% who have researched their new car online come in knowing the exact amount they should pay and are thus driving harder bargains -- that was my experience buying a minivan EIGHT YEARS ago. And, based on that, I would have expected them to want to be on the web themselves if only to establish a value proposition to get some of that bargaining power back.
On the other hand, having done dealer communications for one of the Big Three, I'm aware of the profile -- dealers like doing what they like to do, which is pretty much count the money and spend as much time on the golf course as possible. For years, corporate moved them along by dangling trinkets and trash in their faces; now, for a lot of them, the jig is up and Ford, in particular, I think, is just consolidating left and right, creating a few megastores of 100 or more locations each and putting lots of other folks out of business.
The good news for you, though, is that you might find you have more traction with the megastores, because they'll really get it, and they'll understand the full picture of driving traffic to the web and then using the web to drive traffic to the store, hopefully with an offer that can keep the ultimate sale fairly profitable.
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Permalink Reply by wayne kaufmanschmidt on
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Two ideas on selling what the web can do:
1) Find sites similar to their business that you feel are done well and can shoe the value. Use alexa to show them an idea of how much traffic those sites are currently receiving.
2) Think outside the website. Look at places like yelp.com, list their business and get some current customers to write a review. In the sweeping drive to develop vertical market sites there are a lot of places to get a business name and offering out on the internet without building a site (not that a site won't help too). And in some ways these sites are more powerful since they act as hubs for multiple providers of the same service - so customers are more likely to find them without you having to do additional marketing.
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Permalink Reply by Rita Cartwright on -
Although I haven't had to deal with this type of issue, as a Virtual Assistant, I couldn't survive without my website. It is my number one marketing tool. As a consumer, I value the ability to do online research before I purchase a particular product. Especially, if it is a big ticket item.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Glennon on
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Sounds like your orientation is screwy. Ask your client to find your new effort. If she can't find it online, there's your start. For example, if your client is Cotton Swap Ear Wax Rods, you can easily ask them to find themselves... and if they go online first, but don't spend the most cash online, you can make a GREAT argument!!!
ALL companies should have an online center as the orientation point. If they don't value online as a core, it's your fault. You may make cash this year, but you'll be fired next year.
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Permalink Reply by Steven Shay on
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To me, the company website is one part of the larger digital marketing effort most companies should have. A website alone cannot go out and reach customers where they are online like a display ad can, or can't help customers searching for related products/services find the client's site quicker than a search campaign can. Any good marketing effort needs to create several roads to it, be it search, ads, email, mobile, offline, etc.
It's not an 'if you build it, they will come' situation. Actually, a significant chunk of people don't visit a corporate website by typing in the site URL (depends on the industry). They get there via one of the 'roads' mentioned above. More roads = more people (if marketers do their job correctly).
What usually works for me is showing past success for other clients (ROI, $$ in sales, improvements in brand awareness, etc). Clients like making money for some reason.
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Permalink Reply by PARAS SHARMA on
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I have a different perspective on this. Being a marketer, I am quite convinced with the medium and its potential to not only connect with the right audience but also to communicate the message in a creative and unique manner. However, the problem that I face stems from lack of understanding about this media amongst the traditional creative agencies and also to a large extent amongst the media agencies. While, it is good to say that the interactive agencies come to fore in such scenarios but since they are not the mainsteam agencies employed by marketers they tend to have a project based understanding of the client's business and thus end up not getting the best strategy and executions. I know most of the agencies do talk about how they are seeing it as the new medium (no longer new though!) and are investing in specialized resources but it still is quite undeveloped. Therefore, a marketer will end up having few attempts in this area but 'coz there is no integration with mainsteam agencies or communication, it just dies down. I might come across giving a very bleak picture in the age when few brands are using it so effectively in an integrated manner as explained above but my point of view comes from experience of dealing with many such solution providers across markets and this still 'unfulfilled desire' to effectively use the medium.
The solution lies probably lies in each side pushing the other (or working together) to crack a model where the understanding or possibilities and potential of medium is well understood amongst all stake holders.
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Permalink Reply by Sophie Castro on -
I definitely think the Internet has a lot of potential, especially to communicate messages creatively. I recently saw an ad agency that deals primarily with online video ads. I think they are on the right track. Internet advertising needs to focus more on visual aids in order to be effective. The company is Innovate Media I definitely think they have the right idea of where to take online advertising.
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Permalink Reply by amit juneja on
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Dear Paras,
though an eloquent defense of your view, your reply such as it is, suffers from an almost (if it could be applied as a relative synonym) genetic lack of latitude. I wd rather say that its 'horses for courses' as far as the choice between online advertising and the oft lamented traditional measures is concerned, whereas the more monotonously used methods do indeed lend themselves to quantification, and indeed thereby announce their efficacy or otherwise, online advertising is like the proverbial "light in the tunnel", one does'nt know if its the lineman or the train. Far from letting the logistics like stategy or choice carry the cross for the ostensible stagnation of online advertising I would say that it suffers from an inherent conceptual malady. In a cause and effect relationship as betwen a marketer (I regret very much this perjorative use of the term) and a seller and especially those taking recourse to online advertising the interface between the public at large (one wonders whether it could be called 'large' in but the most grandiloquent flights of fancy when speaking of online advertising) and the marketer depends not so much on the choice of artillery (meaning ad agency) involved, but rather on the shells (meaning product or concept or services or what have you) being fired. Online advertising suffers from a relative evolution in degrees as compared with the more traditional means and a relegation of form in terms of being almost considered a pariah by the purists. When applied conjointly with the tried orthodox recourses to a given case, online advertising would in some cases reap the benefits because of the company it keeps (meaning traditional methods). left to its own devices it remains at best an enigmatic quantity. I however do plead guilty of being a dyed in the wool sceptic of this particular method. As such what ever merit my brief (this plea i.e. and not the one which I wear) holds is conceived from a pathological disapprobation of this form of public address.
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Amit,
Thanks for sharing with all of us your rather interesting point of view and and an underlying angst (if I may call so though I was unable to figure out the cause). However, if you were to notice you would realize that my comment related to issues which probably missed your astute observation. However, I very much liked your thoughts on the medium, it sure made for very interesting reading.
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Dear Paras,
I seem to have inadvertently touched a raw nerve, humility is a virtue I have seldom parted company with, but then again my sincerest apologies for the hypothetical distress they may have caused. (I though confine to benevolent neglect the imprecise and regrettable presumptions about my supposedly sulphuric response,) I can understand that it has still not become eminently clear to you from my previous peroration, that most of the points which you championed with an almost primeval zeal were indeed joined to, by me. The elementary points which seem to have somehow escaped your incisive scrutiny were, that I was commenting upon the suitability ipso facto, of online advertising to given scenario, and had thus far atleast, not argued the brief against its demerits on a more functional plane, however from the response I notice that my inaugural effort seems to have unearthed some very rudimentary lacunas in understanding, which apply a caveat on me further illustrating the virtues or otherwise of online advertising, except perhaps to cause a modest expense of time and a ritualistic stentorian recitation of facts which one would wish to abjure, for want of even a modicum of comprehension. Your response was appropriately bereft of literary insinuations, and as would be observed so is mine. It was nice reading.
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Permalink Reply by Nate White on
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If clients have a hard time seeing the value in advertising at the very least a 24-7 information source for potential customers, I'd give them a business card and tell them to give a call when they're tired of being passed up by their competitors. Focus on the people who actually do get it and build even stronger relationships with them.
It amazes me how some see the internet as a passing fad but they'll take out inserts in the Sunday paper while readership dwindles to nothing.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Green on
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It took someone client-side (Paras) to answer the question. And Nate also summed up what I might say first off: get better clients.
I’m not being smart, but really, there are so many brands out there who do ‘get it,’ why waste your time with the ones who don’t?
If you’re stuck with them though and they may not see value in online advertising? Maybe it took them forever to wrap their head around the value of just a website. Online ads might scare them even more. It’s that way for a lot of brands though, still. I am working with a major brand right now that until this year, never did online ads. If you knew who it was, you’d be really surprised. National tv, radio, print, celebrity tie-ins, decent website. No problem. They’ve spent like mad on that stuff forever.
The internet is still like fire to a caveman for some brands I suppose. They’re grounded in the holy trinity of print, TV and radio as being the only way to ‘target’ customers. Maybe an outdoor. Wow. Thrilling.
Where you and I look at websites as something a client needs at the very least these days, (like a business card), they are behind the times. They live in their cubicles and their meetings, far more than we do. Marketing is often the last thing they think about–if at all. A website though is a given.
(Point was also made about driving people to the site using ads. That’s one way to use them obviously. But whether an ad drives me to their site or not though, these days I should still be able to Google any brand’s name and have their website show on the results of the first page. First place I’m going to look up info after a Google search is the brand’s website.)
Showing examples of successful case studies helps too. But again, if you have to keep jumping through hoops to convince them, why keep working with this type of client if you don’t have to?
Get better clients and the work will likely be better by default, let alone easier to sell in. Having said that, Paras also brings up two things that happen a lot, First, some might need to be educated on the brand side. We are supposed to understand the space, not them. Maybe we forget that not everyone lives it 24/7 like we do.
His second point though is more the brand’s fault as much as anything: some brands have too many agencies handling too many things.
A brand with an offline agency will ask the interactive shop to work magic with leftovers from the print campaign that the brand just loves to death. Now some do make it work, most don’t, because they’re already starting from behind the 8-ball and the strategy they’re made to follow. How can you do something effective if all you’re doing is repurposing a print ad in the online space? Animate it? Wow. More thrills. (I will say though this doesn’t happen nearly as much as with better brands and really good shops, which reinforces the point: better brands see the value.)
Lesser brands will think though everything must be the same and consistant across all media. (Aka, treating all media the same.)
Surest. Way. To. Brand. Death.
Still, living with multiple agencies is a necessary evil, because unless it’s a relatively small shop on a small brand, one agency can’t do it all: print, TV, radio, interactive, OOH, experential, etc. Especially not for a major brand like a Pepsi, etc.
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