Video Marketing and Direct Response Advertising
By Joe Schaefer, PhD
President, Live On Page
Direct response advertising is entirely different than mass market, or branding building advertising. In mass-market advertising the business is seeking to associate a word or phrase in the public mind with a brand name that offers that service or product. The campaign runs constantly so that when the need for that product or service arises, the advertising work to associate with this word kicks in the and person thinks of that brand to solve their need. To summarize, the advertiser is getting word out before the person feels the need for the service.
For the most part, Internet advertising does not work this way. The search engine has emerged as the portal through which most people on Earth experience the Internet. The definition of the search engine itself is a place where people “search” for stuff. In other words they are already feeling the need for a product, service or information and have entered that phrase in the search window. The struggle in online marketing first appears as all of the competitors fight to appear on the first page of those results.
The second battle occurs in bringing information forward from the website into the sponsored ad or description listed with the link in the search result. Getting the searcher to click your link first is not just a function of page position but of the value of content in the description.
If you have crushed your competition and a visitor is now in your site, you still have to win their attention and loyalty because there are many results on the search page they came from. The message you should convey with instant clarity is more a sales message than advertising message. They have walked into a running show store, you don’t have to sell them on running shoes, just make sure they understand that you sell running shoes and start them trying on a few pairs.
This is the main difference between traditional advertising and internet marketing (I refuse to call it advertising). You’re “getting the word out”, you’re making sure you appear on the search page and then presenting your best “sales” message to a well-defined need. The fact that you already know what word is in their mind (search term), you know more about that person that any advertising has ever known using traditional media to reach their “target demographic audience”. For the first time in advertising history, search engines are able to serve up the person and we know the EXACT word they typed in to find us.
