I’ve said it many times…People have no idea what they are doing.
When you market to the public you MUST remember a basic premise: If you forget for one moment that you have to lead the masses by the nose to get them to “get it”, you’ve lost them
There is a new report out that shows that 1 in 6 people can’t tell the difference between the sponsored ad links and the actual results in a search engine search. Find the full story on the study here
The digerati will say “Impossible. Who can’t tell the difference?”
When you start thinking like that, you break another prime marketing rule: Notveryone thinks like you. If you’re reading this blog, I would guess you’re fairly literate in the ways of the online world. But, you have to remember that not everyone who is online knows what’s going on. 80% of the people online only know the very basics of what it out there.
One group has figured out that people really don’t know what they’re doing…..the phishers. And they’re taking advantage of it. I’m not saying that marketers should take advantage of peoples’ ingnorance, but you should be mindful of it.
The fact that most people don’t know the difference in an ad and a result on a search engine is probably actually a good thing for marketers. It means we’re blending in the background. But remember that if they don’t know basics like the difference in an ad and a result…what else are you doing they don’t understand?
