"Advertisers are finding it cheaper to become the media rather than advertise on it and support its bloat"
This is my quote of 2008. I’ve thought about it more than any other because it sums up so many things from viral marketing to the decline of newspapers. The internet is brutal on middlemen and advertising is richest most prominent middleman around. Its an expensive extra layer between buyer and seller.
I left college less than ten years agos wanting to be a journalist. Its almost impossible to imagine someone having that dream nowadays. Newspapers rely largely on advertising for revenue and their business models just don’t work anymore.
The SEOBook quote has led me to try and apply the same understanding to our businesses. Where are we acting as middlemen? Where are we failing to sell anything tangible? Where are we relying on advertising too much?
If you sell ads … the first step is to radically cut costs. Long-term the only solution is to be astronomically better than advertisers at creating and promoting content. I see only three ways to do that:
- Own the #1 ranking on Google for one or more very high-value keywords
- Use an absolutely category-definining .com domain name
- Be far and away the leading opinion-maker in your market
If you sell products … add great content, not just great products.