As much as the Internet has changed advertising and marketing these last 15 years or so, sooner or later the technology had to become a commodity and the message, not the medium, had to move back to the forefront. Maybe we’ve hit that point.
This came to mind because of an article I was reading on Search Engine Land, “Landing Pages 3.0: How Content and Context Plays a More Meaningful Role.” It’s a great article and the takeaway can be summed up in this excerpt,
Whereas the height of Landing Pages 2.0 was an ever-expanding list of rules and rubrics for implementing good landing pages, marketers who have graduated to a Landing Pages 3.0 mindset have outgrown such checklists and cheat sheets.
Instead, they’re now driving conversion programs from a higher set of principles:
- Deliver meaningful, context-relevant content
- Present that content with an engaging, affective design
- Offer a compelling, but not coercive, “next step” to take
This reads a lot more like advertising 101 then landing page 3.0. The author attributes to this new thinking in large part because,
It was also motivated in part by senior marketers — not just the paid search team — realizing that landing pages and websites were becoming the primary touchpoints by which prospects and customers assessed their brands. The rally of digital “customer experience” has brought much needed executive attention to the proverbial online marketing funnel.
I say it’s about time that the technology of the Internet gets accepted as commonplace and the message becomes King, again.