Companies with large budgets can't wait to spend the big bucks on slick TV advertisements. It's like commissioning artwork. TV ads make marketing people at larger companies feel good. But broadcast advertisements from the TV-industrial complex don't work so well anymore. When we had three networks and no cable it was different. In the Long Tail, YouTube, TiVo, blog, multi-channel, web, time shifted world, big bucks on TV ads are like commissioning your portrait to be painted in the nineteenth century: It might make you feel good, but did it bring any money in?
Instead of deploying huge budgets for dumbed down TV commercials that purport to speak to the masses (and therefore appeal to nobody), we need to think about the messages that our niche audiences want to hear. Why not build content specifically for your niche audiences and tell them a story about your product online that is created especially for them?
Instead of spending a million dollars on a huge direct mail campaign that virtually nobody will open, why not start a blog that shows the market that you understand what they are thinking? Or why not establish a Wiki that brings together the people in a neglected niche?
Once marketers and PR people tune their brains to think about niches, they begin to see opportunity for being more effective at delivering their organization's message.
David Meerman Scott
David Meerman Scott is a business growth strategist, advisor to emerging companies, and international bestselling author of a dozen books including Fanocracy and The New Rules of Marketing & PR. His books are published in 30 languages from Arabic to Vietnamese and have sold nearly a million copies.
