Marketing 2015

I've just realised something today - something that has been a trend that's sneaked up on me over the last couple of years and to my mind (at least) it marks a changing behaviour about how I buy things. It would probably be more accurate to say it marks a changing behaviour about how I find things to buy.

The traditional thing (which I and all of us do) is to want something and we go out and find it on the internet, choose the best for our purpose and budget and buy it from whoever came up lucky in the search engine stakes. Or Amazon. Or Ebay.

In the good old days, we'd wander around the physical shops to find something new, but I rarely do that now.

I don't read newspapers much, nor magazines. Much of what I want in life doesn't appear on TV advertising.

I've realised that my main source of buying inspiration is coming from three places. Amazon. Ebay and blogs of one kind or another.

Virtually all my new software purchases has come from a blog mentioning the product.

It's really sneaked up on me how blogs and even kickstarter are introducing me to NEW products in particular and fuelling the ability for small companies to gain traction without massive advertising dollars.

It made me wonder when I ever saw a blog mentioning Xara products and I don't think I ever have.

I realise that the blog world is rapidly being infiltrated by established advertising players, but I like the way that Blogs are still the route to getting the message out there without massive money changing hands, or even any money.

Another trend I've noticed is 'favour me and I'll favour you' kind of selling - often through blogs with someone selling training, for example, mentioning another training product at a discount, often with the favour returned later.

It's amazing how fast this landscape is mutating. SEO is just so old black hat these days..

I can't help but feel Xara is losing out in this new 2015 landscape.

Xara is on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/XaraGroup?fref=ts and sends out the Outsider once a month.

But yes, I agree the entire way we learn about and purchase products today is very very different than 15-20 years ago.

Mom and Pop shops have been replaced by "Big Box Stores", Costco, Wal-Mart, Office Max/Depot, etc. Book stores still exist but they were hurt tremendously by large book sellers like Borders and Barns & Noble who in turn have been hurt tremendously by Amazon and other on-line book sellers.

The advertising business when I was in it in the 70-90s was primarily a business of specialists. As an art director I ordered type to be set by skilled typesetters who learned their trade via working as apprentices and working their way into skilled positions. The 8 x 10 film shot by professional photographers was sent to labs where expert printmakers created Dye Transfer and other high quality prints for retouching. Photos were sent to expert photo retouchers who were skilled artists and could perform miracles. Pasteup artists working in the agency would take the typography and paste it up. These artists wielding #11 X-Acto knives could cut apart words and sentences so perfectly you could hardly see the cut lines. I had one pasteup artist once cut an entire block of text apart and word for word reassemble the text to a thinner margin.

The pasteup was stent with the retouched photos to a photo engraver who created the printing plates for various magazines based on the printing specs for each publication, rotogravure, web, letterpress, etc.

We viewed printed samples of the ads before approval and the engravers were capable of altering the color and other aspects of the ad.

Today the art director sends a PDF/X file to the publication and hopes for the best. :)

I think the key here is that (mostly) I am not responding to marketing fired at me by some advertiser, but learning about the product from someone who I think has something interesting to say. I am finding new product this way by accident.

I am not naive enough to not recognise the guiding hand of an advertiser, on times, but mostly it's very low key.

I am really disappointed by the way 'Before And After' is increasingly monetising it's subscribers through direct endorsement. It feels like most of the mail I get from B&A is about getting me to hand over my credit card in return for a free trial of a stock library.

Xara is on FB but new people need to know about them to find them. That's what's happening in the blog world.

Paul

Xara's FB page shows 54,143 Likes. That's a fair amount. Serif Software has 6,076. Inkscape if I am looking at the right page has about 13,000.

I learned about Xara in 2006 from a post on another product forum. The post caught my interest and I Googled to find out more. The rest as they say is history☺ The fact that they chose an unusual name for the company also made it stick in my mind.

Facebook is certainly important. It's an interesting point since I don't really use FB and so I don't receive or generate FB likes in the way avid FB users do.

Would I be more likely to find a new product via FB than a blog if I was a 'proper' FB user? The answer could be yes. Interesting point, Gary.

I'm not sure about blogs, but FB is also addicting and some members are on FB most of the time. It is a very powerful draw.

I don't like the way family and personal life is exposed to a very wide audience - far wider than would naturally occur otherwise.

I have several FB accounts - to try and separate family from everything else.

I know people are addicted - it provides much amusement and surprise sometimes to hear what people are up to.

I've tried to warn my children that FB is now one of the first places to call for people wanting to check you out. What's funny for you and your friends might not be so appealing to an employer.

A friend of ours has an adult child who has disclosed some pretty personal stuff about the family online via FB. If the family knew they'd be shocked.

I would say I use FB and G+ extensively to promote and sell products I create with better results than any other online marketing platform I've ever used. That said, the reverse hasn't been true - I never make purchases based on information gained on social media. On the same hand, I've been involved in 2 Kickstarters, one as an associate creator (another person was the named creator, even though it was my project) and my recent, very successful Map Tutorials Guide KS, which I did completely on my own. Despite having created/been involved in 2 Kickstarters, I have never particapted as a Kickstarter backer - and doing so is not attractive to me from a buyer point of view. Over the last 20 years, I've made about 6 purchases (mostly used books) from Amazon, and although I participated in one bidding situation on EBay which did not come to fruition - I didn't have the best bid, I have never actually purchased anything from EBay ever. Honestly, I hate auctions in general, whether live estate sale auctions or online auctions - the auction concept does not appeal to me. I am sure that no ad, nor blog article ever pointed me to a product purchase.

Both my FB and G+ communities are designated for product promotion only. I never post personal information, beyond the normal (where I'm at, where I worked, where I lived, etc.) Personal information that could possibly defame me before possible employers is something I never do. I avoid friending people I actually consider friends, most of my "friends" are potential clients or other people in my fields of interest (game cartography, illustration, RPG gaming, etc.) I never post personal anecdotes on my social media. I use social media for business, not for anything actually "social".

I can honestly say, if I'm looking for information on a given product, I will Google it first, then because I run a physical small business (graphic design/digital print shop), I prefer to support local business. I have ordered items that a given store doesn't normally carry, but can order through their company website - so I most often purchase products from a physical store I enter. While I do order stuff from online sources, this mostly applies to supplies and media needs for my business, as well as ordered through vendor catalogs, but this only applies to business purchases. Home purchases are mostly relegated to local shops.

So, I see, that my buying habits are nothing like yours and hasn't really changed in 20 years. The way I market is different, but the way I buy things hasn't changed at all.

Today I would say that you are atypical, Gameprinter. I'm atypical from being less than enthusiastic about FB.

While I don't have "pink or blue hair" as some artist types do, in most ways, I'm a non-conformist, or at least I care nothing to be like other people - so if I'm atypical, I am fine with that, even glad to be so. I do see flak against FB from other individuals - again though its not a problem for me, I limit the information I post on FB/G+, so I think I am atypical in my use of social media as well, even though I certainly use it.

I didn't mean 'atypical' in a derogatory fashion and I think conformity is underrated. It's the atypical things that make life interesting.

This contentmarketing is already a booming way to promote products these days.
I have the feedly rss reader on my Phone/tablet and as webpage on the desktop,
I downloaded a file where 250+ feeds were listed to be used in the feedly app/site
This list contains feeds from numerous blogs about art,design,crafts,DIY,tech and more.
Everyday there are about 120 articles about different subjects and when it appeals to me I read it.
If it is something to keep,I can save it to my (free)account to read about it later.

On real products I do a search on comparison sites so I get the best buy

Hans

FB is 95% purile nonsense. That said I have a friend who operates a chippy and his (in fact his 12 year old son's) marketing on FB is fantastic. It pulls in over 60% of his trade. But it requires constant every day input.

I've never understood blogs. I follow one. Never follow any rss readers, nor twitter or LinkedIn. As for google Ads etc I get pissed off with being targeted for products I no longer am interested in or have already purchased.

In fact I believe the communication channels are become so splintered that they are becoming a hinderance rather than a help. "I pm'ed you on FB", great, I only go on FB about once a week. I Skyped you, I Facetimed you, Twitered you, I Google Chatted you, I dropBoxed you, I Texted you, emailed you, etc etc etc. My names Victor Meldrew!

As someone who not only offers SEO and Social Media Marketing but also traditional Printing services I have found the following:

Printing still works the best if you are a fairly local business as you can get your message out quicker to people who actually need and most likely to use your services.

Actual usage on google for keywords/keyphrases has dropped for people searching for a product or service.

Social media works better for people supplying digital services or for distance selling through ecommerce. Out of the social media outlets facebook is now on the back burner for marketing companies. Twitter, instagram and pinterest are the ones to target.

Here in the UK there are two main outlets for purchasing, Amazon or Ebay, both allow small businesses to compete with the big guys but amazon wins out in terms of people actually purchasing (certainly all people I know bought from amazon in the build up to the Christmas period rather than ebay)

But beware if you plan on using social media for bring in business; there are millions out there doing the same thing, we always hear about how someone creates something in their home and through social media become overnight millionaires (cambridge satchel company were promoted by google through tv adverts) but the success rate is miniscule.

TV/Radio advertising. the domain of the big guys (tv certainly)

The successful companies use a combination of all this to market their product/service.

Personally I think that amazon is about to wipe out a lot of online and bricks and mortar stores this year, their logistics are mind blowing, order on a saturday evening and receive your items sunday morning, who else delivers on a sunday just a few hours after you ordered.

My understanding is that Amazon are hurting Google as the uptake of mobile grows apparently people are using Amazon as the primary product search rather than google on mobile platforms.

All that I can say is that FB and I would also include Twitter here are huge and must be used professionally by any company who wants to stay in the business that they are in. Also these companies must employ people to do only this much like Gary's "Photo Retouchers" as it is a highly specialised skill. Blogs get lost in todays internet as fewer and fewer people are accessing the internet using their desktop. Even when you talk about "Kickstarter" look how many projects fail to get funding and I hate it when a large company use kickstart to bring a product on when they shouldn't need to raise capitol that way.

When we discuss the way that we shop I think I am fairly typical I prowl the highstreet for a product and then use my phone to find it cheaper. Even shops now realise this carrying less stock and using "Click & Collect" just about easing their pain. I think in the future of shopping centres/malls they must have a seamless integration between Off-Line/On-Line shopping allow free Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connections in store and that will allow businesses to highlight offers to the customer. I am sure that these places must wake up to the fact that they shouldn't just be a retail area for selling, surely they will think that they are the place of leisure as it is the only way that they will keep open.

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Originally Posted by pauland

My understanding is that Amazon are hurting Google as the uptake of mobile grows apparently people are using Amazon as the primary product search rather than google on mobile platforms.

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Adding to me "atypicality", I don't own (nor ever have owned) a mobile phone device. If you want to call me, I have to be near my landline, otherwise I get no phone call - and never a text...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gamerprinter

Adding to me "atypicality", I don't own (nor ever have owned) a mobile phone device. If you want to call me, I have to be near my landline, otherwise I get no phone call - and never a text...

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It's not a bad place to be. So many people's lives hang on waiting for the next text or snapchat.

I too am not a FB fan. I only rediscovered Xara because I had occasionally been using Xara 3D for many years and realised last year that I hadn't had an update for a long time. I was surprised that I still had a working password when I logged on and in updating my details discovered Web Designer 10 Premium which I bought to replace my old, dysfunctional FrontPage (yes, yes, I know!) :D.

Am retired now... get software tips from friends, like about MIT's free Bootstrap website builder, and about Lightroom from Steve Ledger. Also get update e-mails for software I've bought in the past, like new product announcements from Akvis in Russia, or Harald Heim's photo filter site in Germany. Still making ads -- print and e-mail -- for a very few clients, but my software needs are trivial... I have DPX10, but could also do everything very easily in P&GD. Purposely staying away now from website development, it's a can of worms and after all is said and done your net profit isn't much. Also staying away from video -- that's for the next generation coming up, I haven't the patience now to make the edits.

Bookstores are toast. Lost four in the high-income Del Mar, California area last year. None left, have to drive 10 miles to buy a book. As noted in the above posts, hooray for Amazon. The Sears-Roebuck catalog of our time. And now, of GREAT interest to me as an author/publisher, Amazon Createspace will deliver a print-on-demand copy of your book in TWO DAYS. Scary fast... here is SoCal, they have a big POD operation up in San Bernardino.

I hate Facebook. Tried it, didn't like it, then spent about a week trying to disconnect from it. Ebola of the social media world.

What works? Word of mouth, always. And, same as ever -- sell something very specific to highly-targeted affluent customers. Sell as high up the food chain as possible... to well-off (but not mega-rich) clients, and also to the person in the client's company who has the authority to sign an order. Sell for enough money so that you can afford to go after those new customers yourself -- personally -- instead of relying on internet leads. Don't sell to governments, or to any corporation so large and muddled that it takes a month to get paid.

And for fun, sell something really cheap and awful to the super-rich. The beautiful people, sort of, if you can imagine the visually-terrifying shock effect of Donatella Versace coming to your door selling Amway. Those folks with the failed plastic surgeries, the women crammed into hideous outfits designed by misogynistic gays, the men with their $300,000 tourbillon wristwatches and their never-driven Ferrari automobiles, and all of them endlessly trying to out-do the others to get to the top of their tiny manure pile. But they have a lot of money, and are easy to sell to -- because they all must have things that others in their small group have. Vacation in the exactly the same place, buy the same bag, whatever. They are VERY uncomfortable operating outside that groupspace, which opens the door for you to sell any piece of junk into it. Marketing 2015!