According to a study released by Fleishman-Hillard International Communications in conjunction with Harris Interactive, the Internet is the most influential media channel when it comes to driving consumer decisions about products and services. Details are availalbe here.
The report concludes that the Internet is the most influential marketing media, but it is underutilized by organizations. Marketing and advertising decision makers still put a disproportionate amount of time, effort, and budget into traditional media channels out of proportion to its contemporary value & influence.
Why? I believe Internet Marketing underutilization is caused by inertia and resistance to change. People who are comfortable doing things a certain way need a lot of motivation to change their ways. And utilizing Internet Marketing takes a lot more effort and knowlege than using traditional marketing.
Why? Because traditional marketing channels are passive while most Internet Marketing channels are interactive. And because Internet channels are interactive it takes knowledge, time, effort, and continuous engagement to use them properly.
With traditional marketing about all an advertiser does is hand over their ad to the publisher and sit back and hope for the best. You don’t need to know much including how things work at broadcast studios or at print publishers. But with the Internet there are systems to learn and methods to master for multiple things like websites, search, social, email, display ads, etc. It can get overwhelming.
Many oranizations see the value of the Internet and are willing to invest time, budget, and effort. But the knowledge part of the equation is often lacking and you can’t fake that; you either know how things work or you don’t. That is why there are so many training articles, whitepapers, websites, books, and blogs (like this one) about Internet Marketing. People need to build up a lot of knowledge about Internet Marketing channels before they are comfortable using them effectively.
So why bother with all that effort? Because according to a study released by Fleishman-Hillard International Communications in conjunction with Harris Interactive, the internet is the most influential media channel when it comes to driving consumer decisions about products and services. Details are availalbe here.
Tags: Internet Marketing
