Understanding Interactive Marketing

Communication.

 

 

Defining Interactive Marketing.

 

 

Interaction can be defined simply as straightforward communication between two parties.    Presently we are in danger of losing the real meaning of interaction, as we tend to focus discussions on the emerging technologies and neglect the communication process itself.   With an understanding of the real meaning of Interactive Communication, existing media can be made interactive, and subsequently far more cost effective.

 

Goodbye to the halcyon days of the TV advertisement of old?

 

A new wave of technology is promising to transform the obsolete analogue technology of television into a two-way medium which allows the viewer to determine what is to be watched, and when.

 

This could well create a situation where the consumers solicit information from the advertiser, rather than the advertiser soliciting the attention of the consumer.

 

Viewers are becoming impatient with television’s linear flow and are increasingly using the limited opportunities available to them to avoid the intentions of advertisers and programme makers.   Even though too many the remote control is a fairly recent development, 44% habitually use it to avoid advertisements.

 

Television is an advertising medium, not a communications medium and, as television declines in the face of competition from the new media, conventional advertising will decline with it.

 

In many ways, ‘advertising’ is an outmoded concept, since media advertising is simply one means of communication with customers.    In an environment in which the balance of power is shifting in favour of the consumer rather than the advertiser, manufacturers and service providers need to look at ways of replacing the monologue of advertising with a dialogue which can utilise a range of different ‘relationship’ marketing techniques.

 

Advertising has to modernise & change.

 

The market place has changed.  Newspapers and television have lost their exclusive hold on the advertiser, the number of print and electronic advertising channels has substantially increased, such as pre-printed booklets pushed through letterboxes, or hung on doorknobs, local cable TV and Direct Mail.

 

Recent events have given advertising a permanently diminished role in the selling of goods and services.  At the same time cynical consumers are wearying of the constant barrage of marketing messages.   They’re becoming less receptive of the blandishments of advertisements, and their loyalties to brands erode as they see more products as commodities distinguished only by price.

Advertising ignores communication theory.

 

As the mass media have matured, the behavioural dynamics of perception and interaction, which were not address by Advertising Agencies in the
70s and 80s, during the explosive growth of advertising have become critical to the redefinition of media and its role in marketing communication.   With passive, one way, forms of advertising such as media displays or television advertising, there is a certainty of a degree of non-response.

 

Lack of communication competence.

 

Most Advertising Agencies lack the skills of communication, advertising messages are more carefully prepared than interpersonal communication and yet ‘message’

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