Old Advertising Models Don’t Work in Social Media

I hate to break the bad news… but the old advertising marketing models just don’t work anymore.

So much so that they can actually HURT your business.

Let me give you a case study from my personal experience:

I like to share cartoons with my friends and followers, and this weekend Parade magazine had some really funny ones about computers and Twitter. So I decided to go to Parade.com to see if I could find them so I could link to them.

Website Mistake #1 – Expanding animated ad covered up the Search Box

So I’m blasted with ads as soon as I arrive at the site.

As I try to get my cursor into the search box to search for my cartoons, I accidentally mouse-over an ad that expands ON TOP of the search box…. so I click the X to close the ad… no luck. I still can’t get to the search box.

Website Mistake #2 – Popup Ad

So I decide to look around and wait for the darn animated ad to finish. What’s next? Another pop-up ad in my face. At this point, I can hardly see the site and am frustrated beyond belief.

I am seriously considering never returning to Parade.com again.

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So what’s happened here? Let me give you a little background. The Parade magazine that is included in the newspaper each week is heavily funded by very expensive advertising. The company has obviously tried to take that business model of selling expensive advertising and apply it to their website.

Website Mistake #3 – Using the Old Advertising Model in a New Medium.

I’m sure the marketing department has been heavily selling advertising on the website. But it’s not working. I’m not a happy consumer who want to go shop at ____ Bank with the animated advertising getting in my way.

I’m a frustrated consumer who still can’t link to the funny cartoon (and send people to their site).

And Parade.com is going to have to do some heavy-duty work to get me back to their site ever again.

I feel sorry for these companies who just don’t get it — they have been entrenched in the old-style, how-much-can-I-interrupt and how-loud-can-I-be marketing for so long and their business may disappear if they don’t wake up and switch their model to something that people WANT, providing answers and helping me, instead of just interrupting me all the time.

P.S. Don’t let me get started ranting about the volume of commercials on TV!

Takeaway for your business: Are you using Interruption Marketing right now? What can you replace it with? How can you provide solutions and answers instead?


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