Advertising for Prospective Customers
3 Jun, 2011
By: Bernd OttowWith the growth of social media, online commerce and direct customer communications through contact centers, the fundamental nature of advertising has undergone a transformative conversion from broad-based messages for the general public to targeted approaches to a carefully selected audience. To understand how this has occurred, and how it might evolve, it is necessary to take a general look at the industry as a whole.
Traditional Advertising
The best advertising, in the broadest sense of the word, has traditionally been viewed as word-of-mouth and networking. This approach still claims a large number of adherents who view the general promotion of high-quality service as somehow unseemly.
Without public advertising, people bought only the items they really required, and their knowledge of service providers was based on face-to-face communications where people typically knew each other and recommended products solely for the buyer’s immediate benefit.
With the growth of the advertising industry, consumers were bombarded with information to awaken interest in generally useful products or services to make their lives easier or more comfortable. Media such as newspapers, letters, radio and television, and, more recently, the Internet and email were all vehicles for this tactic. Yet buyers were rarely pleased by the onslaught of ensuing suggestions because they were broad-based and a high percentage of them were irrelevant to each individual.
Targeted Advertising
As advertising became more sophisticated, businesses began to adopt a more targeted approach to avoid alienating potential buyers. Before sending out any messages, they collected information about potential consumers such as previous purchases, demographics and often personal details about an individual’s life. In the Internet age, this personal advertising employed sophisticated CRM tools based on statistics and comparisons with other individuals with similar interests.
While this approach avoids annoying consumers with meaningless offers, it raises privacy concerns because much of the data gathered may come from information published by the individual on various social platforms in the belief it would be used narrowly by the website concerned. Business websites, especially, may convey a sense of confidentiality when, in reality, much of the data gathered are shared with other organizations in a system of mutual profit for everyone except the consumer. Detailed profiles are often compiled analyzing a person’s entire online history.
Future Advertising
The current situation, described in the above section, is untenable. I believe it will evolve in two major ways.
First, all consumer data will be consolidated in an overall database, and each individual will be allowed to modify it to prevent errors or protect confidential information. Strict fail-safe measures and prohibitions will provide the control desperately needed in today’s chaotic electronic environment.
Secondly, consumers will be able to narrowly limit who can use their personal record, and, as a result, both sides will benefit from a mutually controlled forum where advertisers are, in effect, pre-approved or, to use today’s terminology, opted in.
Assuring data protection, that suggests exciting new opportunities as well as cost and time savings for each side.
