samedi 19 décembre 2015

How Atlanta Interactive Marketing Has Changed Advertising

By Benjamin W. Luffkin


You might be wondering what the term interactive marketing means. Put simply, it means there is some sort of interaction or conversation between the marketer and the consumer. For the cutting edge of conversational advertising the city of Atlanta has been dubbed the marketing capital of the world. Atlanta is home to the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, AIMA.

The AIMA is an organization run by volunteers that networks advertising professionals and provides a forum for learning and sharing ideas. The AIMA is like Linkedin for people in advertising. This is where the best of the best go to keep their industry sharp and effective.

Within the organization there are several sub groups, called SIGs. These are special interest groups that focus on a particular aspect of advertising. Social media, email and mobile are some of the areas of interest. The AIMA website promotes educational forums and shares a blog with its members. The industry professionals work to stay current and evolve their methods as needed.

The company that produces goods or provides the services and the marketing company function as one entity. Through an advertisement, the company attempts to arouse the interest of the consumer, acquire likes or dislikes of the consumer, and then personalize the next ad or email so that is relates to that consumer. Advertising becomes a sort of two way dialogue.

This conversational way of advertising is facilitated primarily by the Internet and secondarily by social media. Before the Internet age, the only way companies could get feedback from their customers and potential customers was with surveys, a very expensive and often non productive process. Interactive advertising will continue to evolve, becoming more sophisticated with time.

Besides the World Wide Web there are other low tech ways to market interactively. For example, when customers call a company to make request, the representative on the phone will tell the customer about other products or services. A radio or TV broadcast may offer a toll free number for the customer to call in order to comment or make a purchase. This is not nearly as economical or effective as the Internet, but it is interactive.

In the time before TV remotes, personal computers and smart phones, the prominent ways to advertise were television ads, radio ads and print ads in newspapers and magazines. With the ubiquitous use of pay TV, online news and pay radio the old ways became less effective. Advertising people are resourceful by nature. They understood the changes in consumer behavior and adapted to accommodate those changes. The new interactive methods reach out to the consumer of today.




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