The rules of marketing have changed. There are the old rules had three main steps, which served to gate-keep, set the agenda, and frame the discourse. This works for marketing products and the news. For now, we will discuss the news.
The first step was gatekeeping. The news media was the outlet with which current events were disseminated. They decided what stories they talked about at the nightly news and what stories they left out. They also decided how to talk about what they decided to talk about. When there were just a few news outlets available to a person, that was the only news they received. And either printed or on television, there’s a finite amount of content that can be fit in a single newspaper or television segment.
In the past, marketing was similar to taking a poster to the busiest square in town and shouting about whatever it was that you wanted to talk about. You more or less had to hope that someone who was interested in what you wanted to say was there when you were saying it. Advertisements were plastered everywhere in an attempt to get a potential customer’s attention. Large billboards near busy highways and interstates, or on top of buildings became part of the landscape. It was not just marketing to get people to buy products, but in the way that radio and TV was made. These forms of content had to appeal to the masses because the technology did not facilitate distributing niche little products with little appeal.
Today, if there is a niche interest, there is likely something to serve that niche. More TV channels meant more TV shows that could be made. Fewer eyes would be on each show, but those eyes were more interested in what they were watching. HGTV is a channel that primarily makes shows about home buying and home renovation. The advertisements that run on this channel are centered around the kind of person who would likely own a home or is thinking about buying one in the near future. The advertisers know that the ads they run on this channel are going to be seen by a higher percentage of people who may act on the ads than say if they were run on Disney Channel. And this is part of the new rules of marketing. You can have a product that only appeals to a niche market, but because of new technology, your product can find its target market. This doesn’t mean that all products have to be serving a small niche market, but that those products can exist now.
In future posts, we will discuss in detail the old rules and examples of how they were used. We’ll also discuss the ways technology has advanced to shift the rules and create new ones. Finally, we’ll discuss the new rules and some examples of how they have been used.