You know what's less cluttered these days? Mailboxes.
According to Forbes, digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 digital ads each day. You say, "No way. There's no way I see that many ads in a day." Chances are, your digital space is so cluttered that you've figured out a screening process for what catches your eye vs. what you decide to ignore. Take email for instance. I have two accounts - one for business and another for everything else. If you're like me, your Yahoo or gmail account is so out of control that if you don't open it for a few days, you'll have hundreds (maybe thousands) of emails. Luckily I figured out a good way to keep it manageable... I just delete everything. Yep, a quick scan of the senders while I click on the little boxes and then I can delete everything at once.
All the while I'm deleting my email and doing a quick scan for anything I might be interested in opening, ads for this or that are popping up on both sides of my monitor. I go to check my favorite news sites. More ads. Popup videos. Paid content. Ads disguised as news... and where is that music coming from?! I check social media and my Facebook feed is full of sponsored content. I looked at some running shoes online a few days ago and now that ad is following me everywhere.
Digital media has increased so rapidly that ad spending on the internet was the only advertising category to show growth in 2017 over 2016, a whopping 20.7%. In comparison, the 'big three', TV, direct mail and radio, fell a combined 11.3%. Marketers are over-exposing their brands, products and services to the point where eventually the consumer isn't going to notice the message.
Too many messages.
It's just too much. We just don't have time for the thousands of ads promoting things we don't want or need. If you want a marketing campaign that's effective and measurable, you should consider taking some of your digital budget and investing it back into direct mail. In 2017, the average consumer household received only 12 pieces of advertising mail per WEEK and 74% of those households either read or scanned that mail. Mail gets snubbed a lot because it's more expensive than online advertising and postage rates are high. But it can be incredibly targeted and it consistently returns measurable results. I'm not talking about tracking results by knowing the click through percentage. This traditional media can't hide behind the clicks. This marketing workhorse targets a specific consumer because we know they need or want the product or service and then we can see if they converted to a customer and how much they spent.
Twelve pieces of advertising mail per week with 74% of households scanning or reading it vs. 4,000-10,000 ads per day. Be in the uncluttered space.
Cheers, Jennifer