Native marketing – the digital marketing panacea, the next big thing or just another buzz word?
People new to the marketing game would go gaga over it. After all, this is what they have been taught in business school – as a brand give the customers what they want, something that will add value to them, through a medium they respect and are hooked to.
That we all know. The win, however, lies in giving them the above without the intrusiveness of display marketing or discomfort of remarketing. If you can do that they will gladly give you their business. And come back for more.
Yay for applied marketing science!
Veteran marketers would probably feel happy that finally there is something which can help them reach their target audience as naturally as possible – without them knowing that they are being marketed to. No dangers of being termed as a salesy or worst, a spammer – (shudders), right?
Quite right. This is what native marketing is supposed to do in a marketing ecosystem where the writers are fantastic and know the publishing platform and the marketed object inside out – and marketers know their target audience to a tee.
And it happens all the time. Just look at how GE (of all companies) managed to sell out special edition sneakers (of all things) in just seven minutes because of a native marketing push, or how Netflix promoted the release of the second season of the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” through an article in The New York Times titled “Women Inmates: Separate But Not Equal.”
So finally, a never before marketing equivalent of Thor’s hammer, right?
Correct to an extent, but not the ‘never before’ bit.
A PR professional with just a wee bit of experience will look at native marketing and wonder what the fuss is all about. In fact they have been practicing it day in and day out. This professional will actually feel like laughing because he/she has been doing it way better.
Before you yell blasphemy, let’s examine the traits of a successful native marketing program and that of a PR program:
Native marketing is a paid placement of the content that is so cohesive with the page content, so assimilated into the design, and so consistent with the user experience that the viewer simply feels that it naturally belongs where it is placed.
Take out the ‘paid placement’ bit and you have everything which makes a PR-led story successful for a brand – a content that communicates with the target audience through a media with an aim to create and maintain a positive image for an entity and create a strong relationship with the audience. A content which is as native as it can be, a medium which target audience has natural affinity to, a brand promotion story which doesn’t feel like promotion. The promotion would actually look like breaking news or a scoop. And here is the best part – all this without paying the media!
Now add the impact dynamic – PR fueled content can make or break your brand, it is that strategic. While a well-received piece of content placed through native marketing would get you few more eyeballs, it is that tactical.
Let’s now consider some PR led successes – Flipkart was just a happy-go-lucky E-commerce start-up from whom people loved to buy books till headlines screamed million dollars’ investments. Soon followed the news of billion dollar valuations. Suddenly everyone wanted to be part of the story – IIM grads, IIT junta, more investors, brands, customers…what not.
Or, consider the classic case of making bacon a preferred choice of the breakfast of the Americans. All just through a series of articles with headlines saying 4,500 physicians urge heavier breakfasts, of course the claim was backed up by physicians in the ‘network.’
That’s is how PR led content can change your life as a brand!
Hence the question from PR to Native Marketing – what’s so new and shiny about you bro, when you are not even for free?
Afterthoughts: Okay the PR professional will probably charge a fee but if he/she can get your startup story on the front page of Economic Times, it’s worth it, right?
