In a word, no.
But if you’re a business, organization, or government agency and think you can continue with your advertising, marketing, and public relations campaigns as you’ve always done without regard for this newfangled thing called “the internet,” think again!
Photo credit: Kevin Steele @ Flickr
An entry in today’s Boston Real Estate Blog questions whether social media tools like Facebook and Twitter can sell more homes than newspaper ads.
The number of real estate agents who write blogs doubled this year from 4% to 8%, and 13% said they plan to start a blog, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors. Other surveys have 10% of brokers using blogs.
There is one comment so far from Linda who writes, “Radio survived with the TV. Social media sites won’t replace newspapers.”
She may be right but is she willing to stake $500 to $50,000 a year on TV and newspaper ads in case she’s wrong?
Or would she be open to the notion of paying me far less than an ad campaign to build networks and grow relationships with her target customers (or prospective tenants in the case of real estate) to achieve a potential greater ROI?
While you think about that, head across town where president Diane Danielson of the Downtown Women’s Club of Boston attributes Seth Godin regarding his marketing lessons for the election, including this bit that TV is dead.
As Seth writes:
If people are interested, they’ll watch. On their time (or their boss’s time). They’ll watch online, and spread the idea. You can’t email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn’t to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we’ll choose to watch it and choose to share it.
Switch to Diane of the Downtown Women’s Club, in response:
It’s true that the first time I watched “TV” on my computer was for the conventions. That broke the dam and now I watch TV shows, movies, conferences, etc. and assume if I miss the Daily Show or SNL, I can always find the good stuff on line.
Like Linda’s comment on the Boston Real Estate Blog that TV will survive social media, a woman named Deborah commented to Diane that CNN and other networks received high ratings for their election coverage, and as long as organizations engage in multi-channel marketing, people will tune in.
Photo credit: Mildly Diverting @ Flickr
The marketing lesson from the campaign, Deborah writes, is “you have to have all hands on deck in order to win.”
Kim Cornwall Malseed, a B2B marketer and copywriter in northern Virginia with her firm, Marcom Ink, understands this. She provides 6 marketing tips gleaned from the election cycle, from which I highlight two pieces:
Most voters I know don’t just view, listen to, or read one source for information on who they’re going to vote for, and the Presidential campaigns certainly know this and take advantage of the available communications avenues: TV, radio, Internet, blogs and social media, telemarketing, direct mail, signs, bumper stickers, word-of-mouth, you name it.
Both candidates used social media marketing via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and several other outlets to “reach younger voters,” but many older voters have also caught on to the value of social media to stay up to date on the candidates and campaigns….Using social media for B2B marketing is valuable on its own but using it to support your other marketing efforts makes it twice as effective.
As you can see from folks in Boston and Virginia (and Seth in New York), social media will not replace traditional forms of media. But when you consider the average age of a primetime TV news viewer is 60, tell me again where TV fits in the consumer dynamic.
I watch TV but less for news and more for cop dramas, food and comedy shows, and on-demand movies. I don’t subscribe to print newspapers, for I get all my headlines online (or during commercials for the cop dramas). And radio? My sole interaction with radio is if I set my alarm in the morning — which these days as I set my own schedule for sleep and wake, is slim.
Traditional marketing, advertising, and public relations rarely grabs my attention. Maybe I’m not the ideal target, but considering the effect of word-of-mouth viral marketing, how am I not? For, if you’re trying to sell a product, service, or idea, and you’re only using traditional media, you’ll never reach me and most likely, neither my friends nor family for I’ll have nothing to tell them.
And you? What do you have to say about the relationship between TV, radio, newspapers, and the internet, social media or not?
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TV won’t reach a lot of homes where the people don’t want to invest in the new standards their TVs have to follow.
I know of several homes that their TVs will turn to snow when that new regulation kicks in, and they have no intentions of getting a new TV.
I could care less to buy one myself. I prefer the Internet, but then, in a government crisis, will they shut the Internet down so we can’t communicate?
Guess I’m one that digs deeper than the average bear. I think we’re in for a ride with what’s being planned, and when the TV turns to snow in January…who cares what the advertisers are saying on them?
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Personally, this consumer does not read newspapers because the information on CNN, BBC, AP, etc. are up to the minute coverage, vs. what happened yesterday before the paper went to printing. I also don’t watch a lot of tv, with exception to a few NFL games and tennis. And the music I listen to in the car comes from my iTunes playlist. So if someone isn’t advertising on the internet, I am probably not seeing them.
~ Kristi
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I think the relationship between traditional local media (TV, Radio, Print) and web will become co-opitive (yes I just made up that word but it’s working for me right now) sooner rather than later.
Why?
Local media tends to regard “the other guy” in their medium (ie, “I’m WXYZ and my competition is KXYZ” in a market) as the competition, rather than cast a critical eye to who the real competition is in their local market, which are the websites grabbing the traffic.
So, as LOCAL media sharpens their web pencils (engaging their own communities online for example, rather than simply recycling their TV broadcast online), they’ll serve local advertisers better, and hopefully gain traction with their core demographics.
Or, something like that. Great post (as always!) – thanks!
There is always going to be a place for traditional marketing. To a degree, it catches my attention too and I always remember the commercials that stand out. But of course social media and further technologies are going to dominate. The ROI could potentially be huge considering most strategies really only cost time of labor. Traditional media won’t be gone, but may not dominate the way it once had.
I just listened to an opinion podcast that said Obama won the election because of his understanding social media and that traditional media cost $30 per vote conversion, whereas his SMS campaign was just $1.50 I guess you could say he’s the first US president to win an election using web 2.0. Let’s hope he lives up to the promise and maintains the momentum in all areas.
Oh yea, for sure. Obama won the election by leveraging the power of the internet, I mean come on…he does a daily White House address on YouTube. He knows the power of social media, and he knows how to reach his audience. Its about time that someone in power gets with it and starts to communicate with the people!
Did radio really survive? I thought it had become a wasteland consisting of ClearChannel pap, NPR and marginalized talk radio.
The last two years I, personaly, saw less than 12 total TV hours and listen to radio less than 2 or 3 hours; and do not read printed newspapers anymore. Some specialized magazines, still got the way to my desk, based on professional needs.
Internet is where I work. I read online news from RSS feeds, listen to selected podcasts and webcasts, use my internet radio to listen to some music streams and read lots of publications and newsletters on their online editions.
From the last generation media, I still use books, and CD´s from my Jazz colection… and that´s all.
Pretty clear, uhmm?!!!
Newspapers already lost 2.6 billion in revenue in Q1 of 2009. Over 80% of households are connected to the internet and use search engines as their primary source of local business search. Right now people are still using newspapers and yellowpages for advertising, but soon those will just be considered throw away advertising. The power of social media gets stronger day by day, and with businesses now almost always on facebook, linkedin, and twitter, they are able to create a huge targeted following for free, much more than you can say for any form of traditional advertising. TV and Radio still have some time left, but consider newspapers and yellowpages as good as dead when up against social media and online advertising. They just can’t compete!