Getting Even Closer To Your Audience - Steve Yanovsky - MediaBizBloggers

The promise of the Internet, for marketers, was that it was going to bring you closer to your target audience, in a medium that inherently engaged them, and provided them with an infinite number of choices of things to look at and to do. Instead of a limited number of television channels, they now had content available to them that met any possible interest, even those that were too "nichey" for any other medium.

So, as a marketer, this meant that on-line marketing represented a chance to deliver your message to a more focused audience…less waste, the holy grail of marketing. Improved ROI, is the principle driving so many marketing plans, and now you could begin to realize it. We all knew that advertising on television was, and is, a medium that addresses everyone, even if people that have no interest in your product, and never will have, are exposed to your commercial. But, that was the price you paid to get all those eyeballs.

On-line would fix all that. It represents a medium that addresses smaller, but more targeted audiences. But, it too can have a lot of waste depending on your product or service offering, or the sites on which you are advertising. What is an advertiser to do?

It appears that the medium to get you closer to that audience, with the minimal waste you are seeking, is mobile. According to a recent report issued by Quantcast, the mobile web share grew 110% in 2009. That growth is coming as "the consumption of the mainstream Internet, on mobile computing platforms…are increasingly going toe-to-toe with our desktop PC's".

Everyone else will weigh in on the introduction of the iPad, so I will only say in passing, that I agree with Quantcast that its introduction will help to blur the lines between mobile and the PC.

This mobile medium, very much in its infancy, has the promise of connecting marketers with their audiences on a more 1-to-1 basis. Messages are delivered to consumers on a personal device that they use for many types of communication, entertainment and information. Also, firms like Mozes® actually capture the consumer while they are in an environment that connects with them on a very personal level.

What do we enjoy more than music and sports as ways to entertain ourselves? There is so much passion surrounding our favorite bands or artists and yelling our support for our favorite teams. Being able to communicate with a fan in the midst of that experience, with a message relevant to what they are seeing and doing, that they have opted in for, can be really powerful.

If a marketer can harness that experience and be a part of it in a relevant, not insinuated way, this can cement a relationship with the consumer that no other medium today has accomplished.

Steve Yanovsky serves as Partner at Customer Focused Solutions and can be reached at syanovsky@optonline.net

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