Remember 7-UP’s tag in the ’80s: The Un-cola? In light of a current ’80s Renaissance, I say, Give me The Un-advertising!
I hate advertising, and I’m not alone. By the most conservative studies, we’re bombarded with 3,000-plus marketing messages each day. Some 80,000 new brands were introduced into the marketplace last year. Google indexes more than 8 billion Web pages.
As a result, we’re tuning out. We’re begging for third-party endorsement, referrals, buzz, word-of-mouth. In short, we’re craving The Un-advertising.
And that’s just another reason to love search if you’re selling something. And, be honest, we’re all selling something.
Because of search, savvy marketers can get in front of customers without directly looking like, well, marketers.
People count on search to be an objective, unbiased source for information. They trust that organic search results are nonpartisan.
Yep, organic search results are as pure as the driven snow, free from the evil hand of marketing’s influence, right?
Don’t be so sure.
Sure, achieving high organic rankings is an art. Alogrithms change regularly. Each major search engine has its own secret sauce.
However, it’s also a science. And I believe anyone willing and able to intelligently spend the necessary cash can buy their way to top rankings.
Give me the dollars and a little patience, and I’ll dethrone Monster from their No. 1 ranking on Google for "jobs."
Pay-per-click advertising is easy, cost-effective (for now, for most) and gives marketing departments all over a warm and fuzzy feeling in the name of "successful search engine marketing."
But as the investment for pay-per-click advertising increases, along with increased competition, and searchers become more aware (and skeptical) of Sponsored Listings, smart companies will learn to love organic search. And as a result, they’ll progressively learn that dollars can buy rankings.
And since organic listings still command 75 percent of clicks vs. Sponsored Listings, the organizations that conquer the algorithms of Google, Yahoo! and MSN for "free" traffic, will have a major leg-up on their competition.
But maybe more than anything, they’ll win because their "paid" rankings won’t look like advertising at all. They’ll look like third-party endorsements. A Google-tastic seal of approval.
Mmm … Google, The Un-advertising. How refreshing.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:04 am
Advertising is most definitely dismal in terms of numbers. Yet money is spent incredibly towards ads of all kinds.
The one thing the ad industry rarely tracks is conversion rates. In other words, how many people saw/heard the ad and how many actually bought the product?
The recruitment industry needs similar rates when it comes to effectiveness of want ads.
However, here’s a little dirty secret about the ad industry. They get rewarded more for the basis of their creativity. Whether or not any actual sales get generated receives less attention than how cute an ad was.
Then again, maybe the recruitment industry knows this. After all, it’s not the most qualified person who gets hired, it’s the one who appears to be most qualified.