Marketing to the Sleeping
Sleeping. The average person does it an average of 7.5 hours a day. It skews evenly across all demographics, including affluents, mothers, hispanics, the c-suite, iPhone users and residents of the greater Miami metropolitan area. You hear people talking about it everywhere. Then why is it so hard to market to people through this universal channel?
Does this sound familiar?
The average US Internet user spends about 6% of their total time online on Facebook. Over 90 million people a month are using the site. You hear people talking about it everywhere. Then why is it so hard to market to people through this (somewhat) universal channel?
The reason is related to how you’re reading the marketing data and some larger issues related to receptivity.
Baby boomers, for example, are one of the groups that are flocking to Facebook. The problem is that they’re not coming back. Sure, you could look at the data and see that in February and March there was an increase of more than 1,500,000 new users over the age of 55+ to site. Get out the checkbook! Call the PR firm! We’re going to market our Matlock DVDs on Facebook!! Unfortunately, you’d be sad to find out that the number of active users actually decreased April and May (by about 650,000, no less). What went wrong?
There were many reasons that baby boomers visited Facebook in February and March but apparently most of them were not there to make a commitment to social networking. The numbers were there but the audience wasn’t receptive to the media, which led to them not being receptive to your marketing.
Receptivity to marketing can come down to a science, like choosing the right color, or a degree of common sense. Interactive media, as the name suggests, offers a wider range of interaction than any form of media to date. Most people simply read their newspapers but on an interactive media property you might be playing a game, creating something, organizing photos or any range of activities that all greatly affect your receptivity to marketing.
People using social media, in my opinion, have a low to average receptivity to marketing due to the reality of what people do on social networks. While someone just killing time on a social network might be receptive to interacting with your brand on a meaningful level, those that use it as a social utility (a segment that generally has the most valuable networks of “friends”) aren’t going to pay attention to your display ads or promote your social applications unless they’re extremely compelling or add to the utility of the site. Can you improve upon the experience of the site or are you merely looking to co-op SOV?
It’s sounds like one of those typical “make better ads” rants but it’s not. There are opportunities for every brand to sponsor emerging technologies that are adding to the value of social interactions. Want to get involved with Twitter? 12seconds.tv has a unique way to add video to the microblogging experience. Looking for an in on Facebook? Why not build something that improves upon the terrible photo gallery features offered on the site. There’s plenty of low hanging fruit, you just have to wake up and pick it.
