Hi I’m Paul Roberts welcome to my PODCAST Channel “THE FUTURE” where I cover BREAKING TRENDS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
In our ever accelerating times, keeping ahead of the latest breaking news and trends from the world’s of fashion, music, film, art, tech, activism, is a time consuming daily challenge? Sure the information is all out there, but it is a time consuming ordeal to scan all the necessary sources. As Darwin said survival depends on how quickly you can adapt.
The future belongs to those who prepare today.
In this PODCAST I want to give anyone with an interest in the fields or Media, Marketing and Advertising the chance to learn what is happening in this fast changing landscape in 2020 and beyond, and what you need to do to adapt. If you are still operating like you were a decade ago, you are in for a rude awakening, because everything you know is wrong !
FIVE EYES
But before I show you the way forward I want to start by looking back, In my 2007 book “NEXT. An Armchair Guide to Your Future”. (Available globally via Amazon books and other better sellers) I laid out just as it says on the front cover “My definitive guide on what to expect from the next 20 years. The key changes in business, technology and in life”.
So it’s now 2020 not quite 20 years from when I published my book, but let’s look at what I said about media.
In NEXT I gave my explanation as to how Media was to change in the online era, I called it the FIVE EYES.
I wrapped my explanation as a catchy mnemonic ‘elevator summary’ of the way people’s interaction with media was about to be changed forever. I warned media companies, marketers and the public to heed my predictions and change accordingly or fail and become irrelevant.
EYE Won’t wait.
EYE Won’t watch.
EYE Won’t pay.
EYE Wan’t to he heard and,
EYE Want to create !
And looking at today’s world in 2020 against my 2007 predictions, I am 100% confident in saying that I pretty much got it right, as it sums up just about every possible way that people’s interactions with media in the digital age have changed since.
So if that was my take in 2007, how am I seeing things in 2020 you may ask.
The FIVE EYES set the landscape for the rise the Internet, connected devices, the spread of film streaming services, the rise of Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Uber, subscriptions to channels like Netflix, blogging, podcasting, Vlogging, paywalls, the on demand phenomenon, the demise of legacy media channels and networks, and so much more. I pretty much saw them all coming.
Lets look at the new biggest forces shaping the marketing landscape.
1-ACCELERATING CHANGE
Well in order to do that, I think it’s helpful to look some of the massive forces of change that have happened in the rise to dominance of our online world.
The advertising and marketing industry has been turned inside out through a successive series’ of revolutions, since the digital revolution’s possibilities were put in the hands of everyone. Each one compounding on the effects of the previous.
First it was the World wide web.
The connected device.
Then it was Search.
Then came Mobile phone apps.
Then the rise ubiquitous social media broadcasting and publishing channels accessible, 27/7 by anyone with a connected device (Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter etc.)
Media publishing and broadcasting being democratised, as individuals and brands became their own publishers and broadcasters.
These days the only true sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to learn faster than everybody else.
So I can assure you that having daily re-learning practice is essential. And the rate of change is only accelerating.
So ask yourself what is your daily commitment to a learning regime like? If you don’t have one, you will simply not be in the game, and if you don’t like the idea of personal re-invention and re-learning, I can assure you that you may live irrelevance even less.
2-CONTENT IS STILL KING
Bill Gates back in 1996 proclaimed that “Content is King”. He boldly predicted that the next wave of zillion dollar businesses would all be content related businesses.
So what did he mean by that ? Well the way I see it, Content is the currency of the online world. Sure media platforms have been democratised for all to use, but channels are meaningless if you do not have quality Content.
Imagine Facebook, Linked In, Amazon, Instagram, Netflix, without Content ? All of social media is basically content. It’s much more than just “owned media” such as a blog or a website, as it’s a critical aspect of earned media.
Could you imagine what Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat would be if they didn’t have content? There would be blank spaces that no one would visit, because they have no need to.
Even paid media – advertising – depends on content. There may be some creative involved, but ads are still a kind of content. As the mixture of paid, owned, and earned media is becoming ever more complex and creating new kinds of marketing, such as native advertising – a combination of owned and paid media – it’s never been more important to create a viable content strategy.
Content can be used to elevate a number of functions, such as diverting calls from call centres and social selling, to increasingly effective digital channels. Smart organisations spread the word of this message because it saves money, empowers employees, thought leadership, and other benefits.
Content is quickly moving past just marketing and is becoming a piece of the puzzle that is the way people interact with the world around them.
3-CREATION IS ONLY HALF OF THE CONTENT PUZZLE
Content is genuinely king, but you need to master not just Content creation, but also Content marketing. As the message is nothing if it doesn’t reach its target. The age of digital has created what I call “The Attention Economy”, and one of the hardest things to do these days with all the noise and information overload is being noticed.
And a little later I will explain how this can be done.
4-WHAT I KNOW FROM 30 YEARS EXPERIENCE AS A FUTURIST & MARKETING AND MEDIA ENTREPRENEUR
Some of what I know if still relevant, but so much has changed. And unlike the dozens of new Millennial age online gurus who pop up on social media each week, spruiking their Guru skills even though they barely have a couple of years business experience, I have a real depth of 30 years international marketing and media experience at the highest levels. Not to big note myself, but you cannot substitute hands on experience and knowledge. Most importantly I am work every single day at relearning and updating my skills.
So a quick recap of my background.
- I have been a brands marketing manager for some of the world’s biggest marketing multinationals, including the world’s biggest in NYC, and have worked on many of the world’s most famous brands.
- I have worked in some of the biggest Madison Ave agency Networks in NYC, and also in Australia.
- I founded and built my own highly successful full service Agency in 1996, looking after hundreds of market leading brands in dozens of categories.
- I have created highly successful new brands, did many highly successful brand reinventions
- Built my own successful digital media business
- Built a publishing company
- Built an Award winning film production studio
- Currently building a specialist Digital Agency, and a luxury brands business.
DESIRE GROUPE
FASHION INDUSTRY BROADCAST
STYLE PLANET TV
DESIRE DIGITAL AGENCY
CASA di AMALFI launch film
So I should know a little about advertising and marketing, and one thing I know for sure is that marketing, media and advertising has pretty much changed fundamentally and on every level.
And if you are relying on doing the things that worked 20, even 10 years ago, you are wasting your time. You are a dinosaur in the space age, and everything you know is wrong.
5-THE DIGITAL AGE HAS CHANGED ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ABOUT MARKETING, MEDIA AND ADVERTISING
In the last decade traditional ‘old school’ advertising like TV ads, radio, print, magazines has been pretty much made irrelevant. Sure you can still do it, but its effectiveness has been replaced by much better digital methods. So what caused this mass extinction ?
Well two little companies to be exact, one was founded in 1998 and the other just 16 years ago in 2004. And of course I am talking about Google (aka Alphabet) and Facebook (group). These two companies have become more powerful and influential than any Agency Network, global Media group or Multinational marketing group in history combined. They have literally taken the marketing, media, advertising industries status quo that prevailed for over 70 years and made it functionally obsolete. And they did this in less than 20 years.
Google is an integral part of the information age. Having all the information in the world would be useless unless we had a powerful way to sort it. Google’s mission statement is “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This means that customers have access to an abundance of information to aid in their decision making process.
Google has created vast new opportunities for your marketing – whether it’s pay per click advertising campaigns, optimising your web content to help Google (and its users) find you, or inserting your videos into various online marketing avenues, in 2020 businesses now primarily promote themselves online and many rely on Google to reap results for them.
Facebook’s unique power is also easy to understand. If you look back in history at all the most powerful media empires, American network TV like CBS, NBC etc.. Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire of newspapers, Sky News, Fox Studio’s, Conde Nast’s global magazine empire, even if you added the audiences of each of these empires together, their total would still be a fraction of the 3+ Billion audience that the Facebook Group has captured. That’s correct: nearly 50% of the world’s population watches the Facebook’s news feed each day. And with the powerful Facebook advertising platform, they built a remarkable advertising platform, and enabled it to be operated by any individual.
The other game changer in addition to audience reach that Facebook has, is with its viewer data. Facebook has tracked and recorded every online interaction its members have ever made. And they offer this unsurpassed mountain of data to help advertisers segment and pinpoint their best prospects down to an infinitesimal level of detail. And when you combine their three features, of unprecedented reach, exact data science to profile customers, all wrapped in a simple user interface with highly competitive prices. It’s no mystery how no other media company comes even close.
6- ONLINE IS LIKE SAND ON A BEACH
With over 4 billion people connected to the world wide web, and most publishing news and content each day, it’s little wonder getting noticed is almost impossible. Having a polished online presence is essential these days, but just having a great website on its own means nothing.
Your amazing website may be like a small shining diamond in your hand, but drop that tiny diamond on Bondi beach and it’s just another grain of sand. Lost and anonymous.
So the question is, how can I be found, noticed, engaged with, and a meaningful ongoing relationship established.
And that’s the dilemma of every single online business.
So what to do? My approach to this always worked in two phases. STRATEGY THEN EXECUTION.
PHASE ONE – LET’S START WITH STRATEGY
Strategy is the planning of the battle, and it helps to imagine it as a War. And any War plan has 5 elements.
You need an Enemy.
It is about Winning.
It is based on a combination of Insights.
It’s about your assets and how they are deployed.
It’s about changing the rules in your favour.
7-‘DISRUPTION’ – MY STRATEGY PLANNING TOOL
When I was doing a lot of strategy planning for my brand clients. One of the planning Tools I used with great results was a thing I called ‘Disruption’. It was designed to aid my clients not only improve their business, but much more. It was designed to help my clients reimagine their market, competition and dominate it.
There were three rings of disruption;
i-Brilliant Basics
ii-Compelling Differentiation
iii-Changing the Game
8- PHASE TWO – EXECUTION
Where Strategy is the War plan, Execution is the Battle.
Once you have devised your winning strategy you need a winning sales and marketing & advertising program to achieve it. And in the 2020 digital age this needs to look totally different that a decade ago.
But whilst the mission is the same as it was before the digital age, the tactics are very different. You still have to craft your message or creative, then the media delivers it. Creativity and Science working together.
And there are different types of advertising objectives. It could be brand building, awareness building, it could be retail advertising, direct response or it could be a mixture of these things.
Targeting the ‘right’ customer prospects is still a key, but in the digital age, the tools and methods available are a lot more powerful and scientific, due to the vast amounts of data that has been stored on every single online interaction you have ever made when online. Companies like Google and Facebook realised early on that the detailed data that monitored and recorded about your every online thought would one day be the most powerful marketing weapons ever imagined. Weapons that only they possessed.
So the age of ‘big data’ has also had a dramatic effect on the whole market research industry. No longer do consumer research studies, demographic tracking, Focus groups, Omnibus surveys hold the power they once had. As digital provides us a much better way.
So armed with all this powerful information and data how do we make the right people aware?
9-MEDIA 2020 ONWARDS
As I mentioned earlier if you look back in history at all the most powerful media empires of all times, American network TV like CBS, NBC etc.. Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire of newspapers, Sky News, Fox Studio’s, Conde Nast’s global magazine empire, even if you added the audiences of each of these empires together, their total would still be a fraction of the 3+ Billion audience that the Facebook Group has captured.
And the ubiquity of Google and it’s Search is just about as powerful as Facebook.
In the past many media channels had power, but nowadays, there are just two players that dominate. Google and Facebook. So if you want to be in the game in 2020 onwards you need to master the capabilities of both these groups, before you bother with anything else.
A Facebook ad is served to a Facebook audience based on user activity, demographic and profile information, device use information and off-Facebook activity.
The elements of a Facebook ad are;
- Ad Creative: The ad image or promo film, or in my case my One Page Funnel and text that shares your message with your ideal audience
- Targeting:The audience you’re targeting the ad to
- Placement:Place where the ad appears
- Bid:Amount you’re willing to pay so customers will see your ad and take the desired action
- Budget:Amount you want to spend for your ad campaign
- Schedule:Length of time your ad will run
And these are some of the amazing targeting features that are offered.
- Location:Reach people based on country, state or province, current city or zip code
- Age and Gender: Narrow your audience based on age and gender
- Language: Target your ads to specific languages
- Behaviours: Reach people based on purchase behaviours or intents, device usage and more
- Connections: Reach people who are connected to your business’s Facebook Page, app, event or their friends
- Custom Audience: Create your ideal audience using pixels, email addresses, phone numbers
- Lookalike Audience: Reach people who are similar to your audience(s)
10-DIGITAL SALES FUNNELS
So now with Google and Facebook you are able to reach any audience on the planet large or small with scientific precision, quickly and cost effectively.
And in this PODCAST I will only touch on how you can use Facebook ads for success. And the complete secret to using Facebook ads, will more than likely be the sole subject of several subsequent PODCASTS, and I will more than likely do several on Google ads as well.
I personally committed to mastering the power of Facebook ads for my businesses and brands early in 2019, so all of my experience is based on my first hand experience.
Ads to work on Facebook need to be made specifically with Facebook’s delivery in mind, via the “Sponsored Posts” you see on your Facebook Newsfeed is the delivery vehicle method most used. So if you want the optimal result you need a very bespoke approach that has been designed specifically for Facebook. And that subject alone could be the subject of a dozen separate PODCASTS, so to keep today practical I will just touch on my approach.
This involves the use of something really astounding and it is the concept of a One Page Funnel, and it is designed to make a compelling offer directly to a selected target prospect that appears in their Facebook Newsfeed. What makes my type on Funnel unique is that it is designed to take a a Cold prospect, and in just one exposure get them to fill in their Credit card details and make a purchase. That’s right, from cold call to sale in one exposure. No repetition, no frequency, no dialogue, no relationship building or warming up. It’s cold call offer to cash paid in your account. You can master the whole thing pretty quickly.
I use a service called “SAMCART” to create my One Page Funnels and Ecom link. It’s the brainchild of an online tech guru called Brian Moran who has a whole, IP, Training, software system, and back up customer service to guide you through the process. It’s amazing and affordable. Go to samcart.com
I currently have no less that 8 separate campaigns for 8 different products running on Facebook ads using the Sam Cart offer software.
So that is a brief overview of my guide to updating your advertising, marketing and media approach to be at the forefront of the digital age in 2020 and beyond.
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