In recent times, the media has become increasingly fragmented with several hundred television and radio channels, as well as a large variety of print media, including newspapers, magazines, and trade publications.
Moreover, since the late 1990s, with the increased popularity of the internet and, more recently, smartphones, many options now exist for advertisers to reach a global audience using digital media marketing methods such as mobile phone apps, Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, QR codes, gamification, and proximity marketing.
With all of these options, many marketers find it beneficial to use an integrated approach to marketing by leveraging the strengths of various types of media. Companies must evaluate all media in terms of who the target audience is and what media resonates with them best. In many cases, assumptions will need to be made and incorporated into the media-testing framework.
It is a fact that people now spend more time on the internet using smartphones, tablets, or computers than they spend through conventional mass media, such as television, radio, or newspapers. This is especially true for the thirty-year-old and younger market segment. Since Sales and Marketing is most successful when it meets the demands of consumers, this change in consumer preferences is significantly altering the Sales and Marketing landscape for established companies.
Businesses are discovering that conventional mass media marketing has limited effectiveness and some customer segments are not even reachable using these traditional media forms. Fragmented new-age marketing generally supports new, small brands with much smaller budgets targeted directly to customers in a global marketplace. This represents a significant distinction from conventional mass media marketing, where achieving a global reach for a small company may have been prohibitively expensive.
While mass media marketing is less targeted and primarily focused on affecting emotional attitudes about the brand, new-age marketing is data-driven and more focused on driving specific calls to action.
Also, while mass media marketing typically involves interruption, new-age marketing is about engagement. Unlike older media options where Sales and Marketing communications were primarily uni-directional, communications have increasingly become multi-directional.
Although generally a benefit to both producers and consumers, this trend can make brand management challenging for companies if actual or potential customers perceive that a product does not reflect the brand message intended by marketing efforts.
Due to the nature of new-age marketing, consisting of multiple media forms and the ability to generate significant information, huge amounts of data commonly referred to as big data are now available to companies. The ability to process this data through proper marketing analytic, and assimilate such data to generate valuable insights, can become a significant differentiator for ensuring that companies engage in smart marketing.
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