Influence of New Media on Marketing Strategies

Meghan Peters say internet has now become the foremost news source for young people, between the ages of 18 to 29. Internet has now surpassed television as a top media source according to this study conducted by the Pew Research Center. Unfortunately, this reflects the situation in Western countries, including the United States of America.


Internet penetration in these countries, specially developed ones, has reached 90% already. The "in" thing right now, is for professionals, students and young adults to be constantly mobile and highly reachable. Technologies have enabled people to be always linked regardless of borders. Fact is, there are no more borders to speak of--only one community talking about the same language--relationships.


Here in the Philippines, 75% of people get their news from television. That's according to a Synovate and a Nielsen study. Only 22 million Filipinos go online every single day, some 9-10 million spending more than 8 hours of their waking hours online. Compared with China, Japan and Korea, the Philippine online community is still small.


However, 22 million people is nothing to sneeze at. Fact is, this is big considering that such a figure may reflect an entire population of a small country. This is also a significant community or market by itself. Imagine, target only 10% or even 1% of this figure, and if you're selling something like a product which cost 10 pesos each, 200,000 pesos revenue is nothing to frown at. Translate that to 10 months, and you surpass a million peso in revenue.


The question really is--how to effectively tap this big market, for marketing and branding purposes. The greatest challenge in marketing is conversion--how best you can show value to your customers so that they patronize and buy your product and services. There is still no definite study on how online or internet users react when they see an online product ad. The buying behavior online is still something of an unknown science. There is still no established laws yet on effective online marketing strategies. 


There are certain individuals and agencies which claim that they already mastered the art of Social Marketing. I know of one agency which claims to lord it over the rest of the competition. 


These agencies are bogus. They are traditional media practitioners pretending to know what works and what not in online marketing. 


For example, someone claims that the best campaign rests on frequency and range--the more you hammer your message out and the more extensive and aggressive your strategy is, the higher chances of reaching out with your target audience and higher chances of increasing sales. 


I don't know about this but what I do know is, even if you hammer your message out hundred times a day, you'll probably get attention but not outright sale. 


The best strategy so far is being controversial and being relevant. For example, a tweet or a Facebook update on a sale at Ayala malls, even if that was updated only once, would definitely catch attention and possible conversion. A click-thru ad if not about real estate or gadgets would simply gather dust.

Writing Two Books Now

I'm writing two books now. The first one talks about the application of Guerilla/Cause Marketing tactics in Political Brand positioning and the other, setting up a Grassroots Organization From Ground Up (" Developing CADREs")

I've been involved in strategic marketing communications since 1996. I started my career in journalism in 1992 and has covered Philippine politics and society since then. Previous to this, I've been involved in grassroots organizing since my college days as a Student Leader in UP-Diliman and continued onwards, both in the context of professional engagement and personal advocacy.

My skills in strategic marketing communications came from my years of engagement both here and abroad. I've worked with the best and got excellent lessons from them. Crafting and implementing plans are two of my greatest assets.

During my stint in Singapore, I've been involved in Brand Management, Market Research and Public Relations. I've continued this here, hoping to apply what I learned from there here. Though I'm reputedly a great image restoration and crisis manager (managing the Starmaker explosion crisis), my strong hold in the principles of Cause Marketing has worked very well for other companies, such as Greencross, Outdoor Advertisers Association of the Philippines (OAAP), Hudson Trident and other global brands which I'm not at liberty to say here.

Sufficient to say, if you want a copy, just email me at mangubat.patricio@gmail.com or cadre888@live.com and cadre888@gmail.com. I'll be happy to give you transcripts.

If you happen to know of any publisher who'll be willing to finance the publication of these books, I'll be most grateful.

By the way, kudos to Janet Toral who encouraged me to write about these topics.