Since this blog is still very new, and I have
only sent out the links a couple of times, I am surprised at having received
direct messages on Twitter with questions related to the topics I have covered.
First of all, thank you for reading, and for your interest! A few of these
messages were written asking me to further describe
"hyper-fragmentation" and a handful of questions were in reference to
proper ways of researching exactly what territories the writers should be putting their
media into. I will try my best to address both of these areas and will include
plenty of links for those of you who are truly interested in doing a bit of
research, planning, and ultimately executing a plan that will work best for
your project or product.
First, let's discuss hyper-fragmentation
in the media market, the basics of what this is, and how you can use this
information to your benefit when planning promotion. Imagine you and everyone
in your town/city has ten dollars budgeted for personal entertainment per week
and imagine there are only four things to choose from to spend that money on.
Let's say these are a movie theatre, a new album, a game arcade, and a live
show. The choices are fairly limited and the companies offering these services
or products can bet on a fairly steady, and predictable, income. Now
fast-forward many years and you still have the same ten dollars for
entertainment but the choices of how to spend that money have increased
exponentially over that time.
Now there are many companies offering even
more services and products like personal video game consoles, individual games,
separate controllers, movies available PPV/On Demand/online-rental /home
delivery/Red Box, etc. This is in addition to the growing number of music
services streaming, selling and embedding everything down to the artist bio,
the bands individually doing the same and hosting live concerts online (with
associated ticketing), plus the growing number of apps and platform games, and
the like. You can see now that each of these industries like movies, music,
games, and concerts have all fragmented and the incomes of these companies have
been reduced as they now fight for your equally-fragmented entertainment
dollar(s). Dig? Moving on...
How can we use this information to develop
a product that will compete in today's marketplace and have a chance of
bringing in a return? For one, realize that regardless of the industry you are
directly involved in you too will also have to "fragment" and dive into
other sectors like mobile/social applications, embeddable stores, social media,
games, videos, SEO, etc. To put it plainly, regardless of the
"sector" of the industry you find yourself in you must adapt to other
sectors to offer your customer or fan a total package. This package should be as
interactive as possible and create a "feedback loop" so that those
customers or fans can always find new information, as well as hidden and/or
exclusive products, as they bounce between your website, your mobile
application, social media, Qrickit landing pages, games, etc. You now have a
media experience and not just a video, game, a single, or a mixtape for sale.
Now, for the next question… Which
territories (countries, areas) are best for you to release and promote your
product in so that you too can have your very own "Rex Manning Day"
you ask? This is the fun part, now you get to use some of the information found above, along with the links I'm going to provide below, to do some
research! Think globally,
there is no excuse for an entertainment product that is not found absolutely everywhere
and in every form imaginable. Japan has been
completely reinventing the way mobile interactivity and commerce is done, China is
an important market, and you can't use Facebook to promote and sell music there so do your homework. The UK,
Germany, Ireland, Russia, these are all important markets that should not be
ignored.
Find your niche, use tools like Claritas and Quantcast to find out who you are looking
to sell to, and then find out where they hang out. Avoid paying for
advertisements that put your product in unfriendly brand positions or using ad services that position
your ad near totally dissimilar products from the one you are offering. Be
competitive and make sure that if you are selling, say… beats or instrumentals
that your advertisement is on a page where beats and instrumentals are sold and
the other ads around yours are related, not a washing machine or a stereo.
No comments:
Post a Comment