Media Futures views every medium as equal. This means that if audited audience measurement is available, the medium is reputable and the price is effective, then the medium can be be considered for your media campaign.
What has occurred in this country and elsewhere is that the over supply and over promise of digital and technical platforms has led to lack of results.
Essentially the pitch has been about clicks, click throughs and maximising views on your site. What has not happened is the second phase, being customer retention, customer satisfaction and making money from each converted customer. Industry figures show that 98% of website viewers leave without buying. In other words tyre kickers having a look and leaving to find a similar product with a better deal.
This development is no surprise and like so many new mediums on the market, they launch in a blaze of publicity and fade quickly and the companies who buy these tools find out that they just don't work. Not a good situation all round.
So what do you do?
Firstly apply the golden rule, never rush in to new mediums and over promised products.
Secondly have a step by step policy of communication with the user, treat them as a human and not as an invisible source of money
Thirdly ask for their permission to follow up and keep in touch on updates and offers
Fourthly practice good customer service by either ringing by phone even if you thousands of customers or institute an online contact programme
The rules of marketing and sales never change despite technological advances and the current digital madness.
If your media policy, media strategy, media planning and media buying are falling short and the technological digital mediums are letting you down
Media Futures recommends you seek an independent media practitioner to get you back on track




Wednesday 30 October 2019
Credit to CEBIT 2019 for arranging this interview
Here's what Stephen had to say.
Q 1. Has social media peaked? Is there too much of it?
I don’t think social media has peaked.There are still a lot of people in the world who don’t have the internet. In many ways social media is useful like electricity and water. Facebook has 2 .6 billion users and there are 7 billion people on the earth so in that sense there is a long way to go. Social media absorbs our attention and has AI to support it.
Anything of too much can be bad and there are limits and there are limits and how it interfaces with your psychology and emotions.Some of that is not understood and we are starting to understand it.
It can be disconnecting and alarming, like the telephone, how can you talk on that contraption for so long and you cant see them. Humans are adaptable.
Is there too much social media..... I don’t think so, but we need the right kind and right quality of social media.
Q 2. With the recent investigations into social companies, has the integrity of the social sector been damaged?
It depends on your perspective as a user, as a social scientist or an advertiser or government.
They all have slightly different perceptions. We have left the age when social media was universally good.
Thats behind us. There is good and bad in the internet and social media.We tend not to understand the bad things and if we do not understand them then we don’t know how to put in mitigations.
I urge companies like Google and Facebook to open up their platforms and ask the experts to come in and ask what good and bad effect is this having on individuals, societies, politics, how opinions get formed. Some are easy to identify and can be removed but it’s the subtle effects those are the ones we need to understand more deeply.
Q 3. How can SME make money from social media if a bidding system exists?
Facebook is pretty good as a platform and they and others have built tools to reach audiences. Before the internet if you were a coffee shop as an example you could not afford to run TV advts or radio advts or place newspaper advts, the audiences were too big and the advts too expensive.
Social media is built for the long tail of small business that traditional media could not build for.
The fact it is a bidding system should not make any difference as its a sustainable business and if a level is not found then prices come down. There is tension in an auction and small business should not be at a disadvantage to big business.
Q 4. How far can social media go? What are its limits?
The key insight from social media is that it taps into a human desire, to be connected to other people and it uses technology to do that.
There is a lot more energy left in social, we have not seen the end of it.
There are 2.5 billion smart phones now,10 years ago there were none. Theres a long way to go.
Its based on what people want to know. Whats going on in my world.The things that are disruptive and exciting are the advancement of data privacy and and consumers will have more control. The things to watch for the future is virtual technology like VR I phones. As an example if my friend is in Bali I can go surfing on VR with that friend.
Copyright Media Futures
Media Futures interviewed Stephen Sheeler at Cebit 2019
Darling Harbour Sydney October 2019
Website mediafutures.com.au




