How to Find the Best Medium for Your Message - with Matt Bailey

In this video interview, Internet marketing expert Matt Bailey takes Marshall McLuhan's phrase, "The medium is the message," and explains how it relates directly to marketer's need to communicate their message in an age of so many different online media.

"Early in the evolution of the Internet," Bailey remembers, "people said, 'All the rules have changed.'" Unfortunately, he comments, people lost some of the basics of marketing in trying to create something new.

"The medium is the message" means that the very same message will be interpreted differently by the listener, depending on the medium used to convey it.

Online marketing is now being shattered into hundreds of different media. The question McLuhan's dictum raises is: which of the many channels available online today, which medium is best for your product or service?

Examples of the importance of the medium to the message include Blendtec's "Will It Blend?" YouTube videos that visually demonstrated the power of their belender. Text-based Twitter wouldn't convey the message very well, but might serve as a good supporting medium.

On the other hand, some companies have found blogging very effective to convey their message. Blogging tells a story, provides links, conveys the background, and drives people to the site.

The questions for marketers, then, are, to find out:

What is your message?
What is the best medium to share that message? and
Do you have the resources to work within that medium?
Then focus on that primary medium and let everything else build naturally.

Matt Bailey is the president of SiteLogic, an online marketing company best described as "conversionists." They help companies understand their message and better communicate it for better results. This video interview was recorded at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Francisco in August 2010.

Category:

Science & Technology

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