3 Reasons Why Mass Marketing Doesn’t Work For Small Business

Promoting your services is extremely expensive if you focus on mass marketing to everyone. In today’s marketplace, consumers have far more choices than ever before – and are overloaded with information.

Reason #1: More Choices, More Content

Back in the 1960s, it was much more likely you could reach virtually everyone with mass advertising. The average home received 5.7 TV channels. There were only 8,400 magazine titles, and 4,400 radio stations. As a marketer, you knew that if you were to advertise on TV during prime time, there was a good chance you’d reach people likely to buy your product.

Now we have 100s of TV channels, over 17,000 magazines, over 13,000 radio stations, over 25,000 internet broadcast stations. There are over 120,000 books published each year. And Google has indexed over 8 billion web pages.

Reason #2: Prospects Ignore What Isn’t Relevant To Them

It’s impossible to remember every bit of information we are exposed to each day, so in order to cope, we ignore the stuff that isn’t relevant to us.

Think about the last time you bought a car. As soon as you bought it, you started noticing how many other people have the exact model and color as yours.

Or the last time you planned your vacation. Suddenly, it seems everyone is advertising and offering information about the trip you want to take. Planning for Disney World in Orlando? Everyone now wants to send you information about hotels and local attractions.

That information was always in front of you. You just didn’t notice it because it wasn’t relevant to you until now, when you’re actually planning your trip.

Reason #3: Interrupting Prospects No Longer Works

Because prospects are overwhelmed with information, with choices, simply trying to get their attention by interrupting them just doesn’t work. Mass marketing such as TV commercials, print ads, radio commercials and the like “interrupt” prospects from whatever they are doing and ask them to pay attention to their jingle or witty dancing animal or car going from 0 to 60 on a winding road.

That used to work, somewhat. But now that type of advertising is much harder and requires far more money to make it work. What works better is providing relevant information about what your prospect is already interested in – what he is already searching for answers to. It’s so much easier to get his attention that way.

What To Do? Reach Prospects With Educational Information

Information is everywhere – and your prospects know that anything they ever want to know is a Google search away and it will only take a few moments of their time.

While this is great for informational searches, it means everyone is suffering from information overload. Yes, they can find answers to whatever crosses their mind at the moment, but the bigger issue they now have is how accurate and up-to-date the information they’ve found is. Does it tell them exactly what to do to solve their problem or does it only focus on certain steps and leave out others? What about issues they haven’t even considered searching for?

That’s what your marketing should focus on. To grab people’s attention and get them to keep reading, you need to provide not just information, but organized knowledge that educates them about their problems and concerns and is worth their time to read.