Broadcasting vs Narrowcasting

The Social Networker

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away … well, not that far away, it was only Cornwall but it was a million years ago, I did a Broadcasting Studies degree. One of the themes that our tutors came back to time and time again was the rise of satellite TV and how we were moving from a broadcasting media to a narrowcasting. To put this in context, this was 20+ years ago. Satellite TV was driving so many of our media decisions at the time and was just beginning to hone in on different sets of people.

Broadcasting, sending your message out to a wide swathe of people, was under threat. Advertising on national terrestrial television channels or national radio channels was expensive and held no concrete guarantee that you’d see a lift in sales. Everyone was talking about this exciting thing of narrow casting, advertising on the niche channels on satellite tv, in niche magazines and radio stations to speak to the specific audience you wanted to.

Narrow casting was the grandfather to today’s online advertising platforms.

Cat Howell, who runs a fantastic group on Facebook called Facebook Ad Hacks demonstrated the ability of online platforms to be SUPER targeted in a fantastic video. I’ll explain it as best I can. She was attending a conference called “Funnnel Hackers Live” with another 3500 odd people. She went into the Facebook Ads Platform and created a job advert for her business. She targeted people who were interested in ClickFunnels and who were currently in the post code area of the event. Her estimated audience reach came back at 3500. Or near as damn it. No wasted ad spend, no one who wasn’t interested in her advert or job. Very specific, very targeted and totally to the people you want to be reaching.

This is how specific we can now be with our marketing efforts.

Do you have £30 to spend on marketing? Are you targeting your marketing efforts? If not, what could you do today to start targeting your ideal clients? We will be building training modules about how to do this in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned for how to access them!