Mass Marketing is a strategy in which organizations appeal to all the market with one offer or one strategy, ignoring the market segments. It supports the idea to send the message that will eventually reach a large number of people possible through radio, television and newspapers. It is a belief, if you had a better mousetrap and could gather up enough money to tell enough people, you can push your product into the market and eventually will sell enough to build a good business.
There is a classic print ad from the late 50’s from Business week Magazine which highlights the crux of mass marketing. It featured a veteran buyer sitting solemnly in his chair, to his right run these eight lines of copy:
I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s product.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s customers.
I don’t know your company’s record.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now—what was it you wanted to sell me?
The ad concludes:
Moral: Sales start before your salesman calls,with business publication advertising.
The common wisdom at that time was just to get your message out there. For last 100 years, mass marketing was the only economical way to reach out to consumers. But things have now changed.
In the current scenario, marketing has been changing rapidly. Now, primetime TV ads, radio broadcasting, full-page ads are no longer enough. The marketing universe is transforming and reinventing itself. There are thousand number of products, brands, mediums available and it becomes difficult to market your product effectively through mass marketing. Organizations need to develop a product around the needs of customers and adapt to the form of inbound marketing. Today, the onus is on organizations to establish direct, sincere, and localized dialogue with consumers. It’s all about the customer.
There are numerous factors which have changed the buying behavior of consumers beyond recognition and has made mass marketing irrelevant for most business.
Huge flow of information
We are continuously bombarded with abundant marketing messages every day. If we look into the average email opening rate in 2011, it was only 11%, which indicates that 89% of all the emails were never opened or looked. The fact is that most of the emails aren’t just important to spend our time. And email, of course, is just one of many message delivery mediums. There is a commercial clutter which is out of control and it becomes very difficult for your organization to get noticed in all this clutter. Thus, today there are so many messages delivered to us, people loose trust in the emails and they most likely make the decision by hearing from friends, experts, online ratings or their own research.
Technology advances
Google has already disrupted the traditional model of advertising, they have revolutionized the advertising model where advertised are only charged on a pay per click and all the response rates are measurable as well, unlike traditional media. Technology is evolving very rapidly and there are huge advances in data collection and data mining.It will be critical that marketers use this data wisely. The data can effectively target audiences with more accuracy, which will ultimately make it better for everyone and make a greater effect.
Rise of Social Media
All the big players of social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. were all started in early 2000. Thus, by 2009, hundreds of millions of people were enthusiastically embracing social media. It reached a tipping point and became mainstream. Also, it’s a no secret that digital advertising has become a key part of all the marketing campaigns.
With the evolution of social media at a rapid scale, a large number of people use social media connections and guide to buy the products. Internet advertising spend overtook newspaper ad spending way back in 2013, and eMarketer predicts that it will overtake TV ad spending for the first time by the end of 2017.Thus, organizations cannot ignore social media and it has completely changed the marketing as well.
Although, we are moving towards more personalized marketing but in my opinion mass marketing isn’t dead. It’s just not satisfying anymore and in no doubt, it's declining continuously. However, mass marketing is a powerful way to send your messages to masses. It’s still an effective tool in specific industries depending on the context or the brand. There are companies like Coca-Cola and Nike which use mass marketing extensively to retain their brand's appeal throughout the world. Mass marketing helps build brands, reinforces company’s mission statement and you can get the attention of millions of people.
In today’s world, marketing is changing dramatically and it's re-inventing itself with all the analytical tools, channels, algorithms etc. We are moving towards the world where the customer is the king and the marketing is more customer oriented. Customers need to feel important and need to send only those messages which are concerned with them only. Thus there is a need for the firms to spend on analytical tools, understand customer’s needs and work hard to improve the services. Therefore, firms need to invest in a reliable analytical system, understand their client’s needs, provide the promised products, experience and adopt personalization practices. In short, no mass marketing isn’t dead, but it’s no longer enough. It’s important to adopt to today’s realities and to keep on evolving yourselves to change with the changing times.
