Anyone with a Facebook account is quite familiar with the "ALS Ice Bucket Challenge." For those of you still holding out, "the Challenge" is an awareness-creating, fund-raising initiative that has been wildly successful in raising money for the cause. In the last month alone, "the Challenge" has raised over $40 million in donations. By comparison, there was $2 million donated over the same period last year. By any measure, this is success. It also gives us a glimpse at what the future of advertising could look like.Depending on the source, we have gone from being exposed to approximately 500 advertisements per day in the 1970's to about 5,000 per day today. How many of the ads that you saw on this very day can you remember? I thought so. Now, how many of your Facebook friends' videos from today can you remember? I bet ALL OF THEM, and that's the point. It's not the magnitude of daily exposure that matters, it is what is registering in our brains that counts.Today's economy is being driven more and more by this type of "Peer-to-Peer" initiative. We hear all the time that the best form of advertising is word of mouth, and that is exactly what this is. Our friends are advertising a message to us and our other peers, and we are responding. Social media advertisements are moving at the speed of a click, and thousands are on the other end to receive the message.While these particular "Challenge" postings are free (anybody can do it!), it should be noted that paid advertisements on social media sites are very inexpensive. Ads can run all day, and for as little as a dollar a day. This isn't new, and in fact the delivery methods are changing about as quickly as they can be written about. As a company trying to promote goods and services, the choices can be maddening. The alternative of not participating in social media advertising? That can be costing you in lost sales.
If YOUR Company is spending thousands of dollars per trade publication ad, chances are that you are not even being provided with the sales lead information in a way that's meaningful and actionable. By comparison, the social media "pay per click" fee of (literally) pennies, comes complete with the lead information - directly to YOU. Tough to beat.In today's social media vernacular, we "tweet" our messages, "pin" our pictures, and use something called a "hashtag" (I don't want to understand that one). Who knows what we will be doing tomorrow. The world is getting smaller everyday, and the word of mouth is getting faster.If you are ignoring the ever evolving way in which advertised information is being delivered to the masses, you might as well stick your head in a bucket of ice water. More importantly, YOUR Company is missing out on great opportunities to greatly enhance your message.
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