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I’ve read a lot about ads; ads for mobile, ads for Twitter, ads in Facebook, ads on TV, display ads, text ads, ads here, your ad there. Ads are seen as a way – the way – to monetize these media.
Selling ads is great if you’re in the media bubble. You can sell lots of ads to sellers who want to reach buyers. This marketing trinity is a tried and true win-win arrangement, and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.
But let’s set aside the media interests for a minute and consider the other two players in this marketing trinity, the buyer and the seller. As Gord Hotchkiss mentioned recently in The Persuasive Power of Face-to-Face, buying and selling works best for everyone when there’s a high degree of trust, and an impersonal ad may not be the most effective way to build that trust.
What does a seller really want? A seller wants to be top-of-mind with the buyer when they’re making a decision to purchase. A buyer wants to find a solution to their problem as efficiently as possible, whether it’s a small repeat purchase or a large ‘blank slate’ kind of purchase. And this is why online search is so useful in B2B buying and selling. Buyers can research sellers, products and services online. Sellers can hunt for new customers online, and everyone can check out everyone else’s competition.
I get a little alarmed when my inbox fills up every day with new articles and surveys about selling ads in this space or that space, or how best to personalize ads, because sometimes it makes me feel like we’re all missing the point. The point is not how to sell more ads, charge more for ads, place ads in front of more people and so on. OK, well, maybe that is the point if you’re an ad sales rep. But from the buyer or seller’s perspective, the question is really how can we be introduced to each other at an appropriate time, in an appropriate manner, and develop enough trust within the timeframe of the buyer’s purchase process to satisfy the interdependent needs of the buyer and the seller.
That introduction of the buyer to the seller often involves media of some kind, plus a flavor of marketing. From the sign on your door (media), to word of mouth (marketing), somehow as a buyer I need to find out about your potential solutions to my needs.
Search, and to some degree social networks, are amazing places to discover what people are thinking about. The internet is a great tool for communicating and connecting to people. But before marketers get excited about interrupting me yet again in another medium, let’s take a breath and remember the people involved in whichever environment we’re trying to reach them in. Like a good waiter, be there when I need you, and the rest of the time please don’t keep interrupting my meal trying to up-sell me on dessert. I’ll let you know when I’m ready, if you’re paying attention.