Push vs. pull
As I enthusiastically pitched the latest, coolest, online marketing product my client cut me short, "I sell a dull product. Nobody will click on a banner to read more about it. People buy it because they need it, and when they don’t need it they don’t want to know anything more about it."
The core benefit on online media is engagement. But what happens when your client is selling a dull product and true engagement unlikely?
For many, there is another category of dull products getting a lot of attention these days, presidential candidates. With many contests extremely close it is often not the engaged, well informed voter who decides elections, rather the undecided, unengaged swing voter who might see all candidates as very dull.
That is why we see a curious pattern of media spending. While all candidates are using the Internet to raise money and engage their base of voters, the vast bulk of the outgoing media spend is on television because it is a "push" media.
According to eMarketer on those undecided voters...
"Generally speaking these are the typical targets who are difficult to reach using the Internet. That’s why in this political season, 50-80% of ad budgets are going into television, whereas only 1-2% of political ad budgets are spent online. It’s not to say the candidates are not using the Internet to their huge advantage, Barack Obama’s amazing online funding machine has proved to be the key advantage to his success. But when it comes to reaching out towards the uninterested, the uninvolved, and the even bored participants, very often traditional media there’s a big advantage over the newer online ones.”
On a call.
If your advertiser’s product is very dull, put the "engagement" talk on the back burner and talk about the virtues of “push” media. Push media succeeds in these situations because viewing the ads is not voluntary. When you are selling very dull products forget about "permission marketing" you need to recommend "push." Now share the story, stated above, about the presidential race. Now sell the push media you have, Print media, television, and radio are "push media." For online media sell e-blasts, which “push” a message to a target audience's inbox.
Estimates as to how much has been spent so far this year online on political campaigns (not much):
No matter what sector or industry you are in, this is a great study to sell the value of print advertising. The study released this March from consulting firm, "What Doctors Think" documents how physicians prefer to receive their professional information, and magazines top of their list. The study has implications beyond just medical magazines because of the importance and prestige doctors have. The study, with 231 physicians responding, also covered a variety of other perceptions doctors have on the media that serve them.
Use it on a call.
Talk about the importance physicians play in our society. Talk about how, unlike almost any other profession, the information they receive will impact life or death decisions. Then show them the chart. When information absolutely must be accurate and trusted, magazines deliver.
There is another reason to use this study. On April 4th I posted on the just released MediaVest study that measured the amount of trust consumers felt for different media in four major categories. In the fashion, food, and entertainment fields, magazines were found to be most trusted, but in health and wellness onlline sources were tops. Michael Turro posted a comment raising the concern that had print fallen behind with readers in the only category, "that could kill them." Cheer up print reps! You can now use this study in conjunction with the MediaVest study. While consumers may find online media in the health and wellness field more trustworthy than pint, doctors do not agree.