In this article, we’ll explore the disadvantages of a mass communication approach to Business-To-Consumer (B2C) communication and how digital media technologies can help overcome these issues.
One disadvantage for businesses that use mass communication is that they cannot accurately identify demand for their products and services because their delivery method focuses on reaching the largest amount of audiences as efficiently as possible. An example of this is advertising at sporting events that attract large amounts of consumers due to its popularity. Though they reach a large number of people, they lose out on ensuring that they are advertising directly to the individuals who are specifically interested in their products and services.
Another disadvantage for these B2C’s is that they cannot directly reach consumers on almost all digital media platforms. For instance, by advertising via television commercials only, they may miss out on advertising to consumers via online delivery channels like video streaming, blog content, and mobile application advertisements.
Businesses can overcome traditional communication limitations by using advertising analytic tools and services that can “chew through terabytes of data and hundreds of variables in real-time” to measure how people interact with advertisements across multiple media channels and to determine what marketing efforts really work, according to Wes Nichols’ Harvard Business Review article “Advertising Analytics 2.0”. Doing this can help a company determine the exact combination of digital ads including location, placement, and time, that most effectively stimulated the desired engagement with their target audience.
Next, we’ll explore three ideas that impact how businesses communicate through their public website.