Have you had an overload of content yet? Don’t worry … you will.
For all the great things our Internet enabled interconnections have given us, we pay by receiving gobs of completely useless content, most of which is apparently generated by green marketers and my Facebook friends. The number of bytes per second received by today’s average wired human now exceeds the number of bytes per second sent by all the world’s mainframes in the 1960s. Marketing content — especially HTML layered ads — is devolving into poorly targeted noise that is more aggravating than accepted, according to Content Blossom.
People are tuning out in the same way they learned how not to watch TV commercials by 1958.
Advertising noise has always been problematic for marketers, and the Internet in some ways is making it worse. Since marketers are responsible for much of this noise, they are creating their own problem. For any message to be heard, it has to get past the noise in exactly the same way as a whisper has to be close and personal to be heard in a noisy bar. As the Internet noise level rises, savvy marketers will narrow and target their outreach. To do so, they will need to focuses on three things that make messages viable:
Precision: Messages have to be precise, which means they must succinctly communicate value. Vague targeting, abstract language, and even too many words keep people from hearing what you have to say (which is why most people can’t stay awake during a politician’s stump speech).
Value: Value propositions have to be compelling to well-targeted audiences. Failure to communicate value provides motivation to quit paying attention. One clear statement about why your product is valuable will cut through 1,000 glitzy and wordy pitches from your competitors.
Incremental: Using your landing page to tell every buyer genotype everything about your product creates both confusion and frustration. Like dating, the processes is one of incremental familiarity. Giving the right message, to the right person at the right time in their buying decision process eliminates noise fatigue.
Content flooding provides little aside from keyword litter and generally poor leads. Precise, succinct, highly targeted and step-wise messages creates paying customers.