The misinterpretation of marketing

When people think of marketing, a lot of preconceived notions pop up in their minds and not all of them are great. Many customers associate marketing with manipulation, deceit, and spamming. The current misinterpretation of marketing can be attributed to a number of times brands have resorted to desperate or invasive tactics in order to drive awareness or conversion. It is when marketeers are incredibly out of touch with their end customers that these tactics translate into campaigns that are more like trainwrecks than trailblazers.

Intrusive ad placements

Intrusive ads are those which interrupt a core user experience. Not understanding how to present your marketing materials to general audiences can instantly create a negative perception of your brand. Think about pop-up ads and how common they used to be during the first years of the internet. At one point, browsers themselves started offering pop-up blockers. People only want the content they are engaged with at the moment. Intruding on this with a brand message not only demotivates the user from consuming the content further but also instils negativity in their mind regarding the advertising brand.

An example of good ad placement would be the way Instagram places ads between stories. This allows the ad to appear as a pause when consuming content rather than being superimposed during the consumption process. Even ads in the middle of pages on news sites are okay as long as they are tasteful and do not interrupt the reader too much.

Poor design and copy

Most people working with brands need to remind themselves that simplicity is the best way to etch a brand slogan or an ad copy onto customers' minds. Too often, we see Bangladeshi marketing agencies go the route of simply writing two incoherent lines that barely rhyme. Some of the most unimaginative and boring pieces of content are churned out by brands in the hopes of making them viral—a misplaced emotional angle, a forceful attempt at humour, or fake "real" stories.

There are numerous examples of great copy and design on the internet. But it is certain that most of them have been utterly misunderstood in marketing classrooms across the country.

Repetition

I cannot recall how many times I've seen the same ad for a mobile game that doesn't even resemble the final product. This type of spamming only ends up invalidating the product being advertised as it simply annoys all those who are targeted. Unfortunately, those who think this tactic is a successful one follow the cliche notion that even bad publicity is good for their brand. After being spammed, not a single person talks about how the product being advertised is, but they do talk about how they now dislike the brand or the ad that they're being continuously exposed to. Brand recall is worth nothing if it leads to the thought that this product is not worth buying.

Let's take the recent ad placement inside Dhaka's metro rail carriages as one such example of repetition. The eyes are invaded by the same marketing content regardless of where one looks. To some, this may seem like a huge win as there's no escaping the brand at all. The reaction on social media, however, is primarily about how badly executed the campaign is. No one is rushing to the brand's stores and buying out all their stock. Everyone is upset that the brand ruined the interior of an otherwise good-looking train car.

Marketing is supposed to be value-driven at the core. This means that all forms of marketing for a product must capture the innate value that it serves to customers. Evoking emotions of being at home by mentioning the reliability, quality, and safety of home appliances, for instance, would be a great approach. The best brands have avid followers who swear by their values and are proud ambassadors of their missions.

Today's customers are also more informed than they have ever been regarding products. The democratisation of access-to-information sources like internet communities has paved the way for people to choose the best product for their needs. For brands to ignore this aspect of marketing is a sure-fire way of instigating negativity towards themselves within trusted online groups. Some brands try to adopt a piecemeal approach to this by faking scenarios where a supposedly real customer is shown trying out the brand's products in a staged environment. Such tactics are easily seen through and should be avoided.

Good marketing is finely segmented and precisely targeted. While all-encompassing campaigns might be great for raising awareness, they do little to relate to people on a personal level. When brands ground themselves and really fine-tune their segmentation and targeting, their campaigns can resonate quite well with their intended customer base.

At the end of the day, marketing is not inherently a manipulative discipline. It is the misuse of marketing tactics by subpar brands that paints this image in the minds of end customers. Marketing, at the end of the day, seeks to deliver the right value to the right user. Unfortunately, it always is easier to just plaster tens of copies of the same poster inside a metro train car and call it a day.

Shahrukh Ikhtear is a product manager at a leading tech company. Reach out to him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/srikhtear

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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