How Noise is Killing the Appeal of Traditional Marketing Strategies

Taye Marshall

Billboard success can’t be measured in dollars…or anything else.

In today’s marketing world billboards drive little awareness and even less action. Can I back that up? No. I can’t, because it is almost impossible to measure the results of billboard advertising. Some will say that billboards are not about conversions only building brands through awareness. Really? I pass 100 everyday, and I can’t remember one.

Email ads are DOA.

Billboards aren’t the only wrecks on the road of ineffective marketing. Have you seen the pile up of ads in your email lately? Another blogger recently touted the 20% open rate on email ads. But that is 20% of opt-in subscribers. People that want email ads only open 1 in 5 of them! And what about the dropoff? Successful entrepreneur and marketer Gary Vee grew a multi million dollar business using emails as part of his marketing strategy. Gary says, “in 1997 I had 240,000 person wine email list with 91.1% open rates… and a 73% click through ratio to the product or the buy button.” So, if emails are so successful, how did the 70% drop off to the bragged about 20% occur?

How do banner ads compare? Ask the 1 in 1000 that click them.

The click through rate for banner ads is at around 0.1% (DoubleClick), that means for every one thousand people that see an ad only one person will click it. On mobile ads it’s even worse because 38% of ad clicks are accidental(GoldSpotMedia). In fact, you are more likely to summit Mount Everest than click a banner ad (Solve Media). Enough said.

What is the problem?

Quite simply the problem is noise. We are inundated with these traditional forms of advertising and, because we have so little attention and even less time, we ignore them. When they were each new and fresh, we paid attention. Now they are the fish tank we neglect to clean. We are experiencing a kind of “noise-induced attention deficit”. Why then do brands continue to waste their money on these outdated forms of marketing? Because they can’t see the signs for the billboards.

Posted previously on: www.blog.gnackapp.com