Marketing 2015

**pauland** · 02 January 2015, 02:13 PM

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.

**gwpriester** · 02 January 2015, 02:35 PM

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Mom and Pop shops have been replaced by "Big Box Stores", Costco, Wal-Mart, Office Max/Depot, etc.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.

**pauland** · 02 January 2015, 02:49 PM

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

**gwpriester** · 02 January 2015, 04:43 PM

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.

**angelize** · 02 January 2015, 04:48 PM

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.

**pauland** · 02 January 2015, 04:54 PM

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.