Ad blockers are changing the entire buying landscape. I mean, buyer psychology has pretty much remained unchanged over the last 100 years. Consumers still buy more frequently to fix something wrong compared to when they buy to enhance something. They still listen more to their friends versus strangers and advertising. The choices out there are still too many and confusing.  However, when it comes to the actual ‘how’ of the buying, that’s where the world has changed dramatically.

Buyers Using Smartphones

If your mind can handle the fact that recent studies say people interact with their phones 13 times per hour, you’ll see why it’s important to understand how to be relevant in this space. Whether for B2B or B2C! While people might be eyeballing their smartphones constantly, that doesn’t mean that they’re open to getting your advertising or messaging. As is indicated by the research that shows that 1 in 5 smartphone users use an ad blocker, a 90% rise over just last year!

The Workaround

Well if people are blocking out the gorgeous and expensive campaigns you’ve created in your marketing, what hope is there for you to penetrate your target? Luckily there’s something that people are still doing in droves that you can intercept as part of the online purchase process and that’s SEARCH. Yup, get a load of this: 76 percent of all consumers who run “near me” queries with mobile search visit a storefront within 24 hours–and 28 percent of them make a purchase.

Be Specific

Of course, the best way to win the search game is to be very specific about who you target and what problem you solve. There’s a whole proprietary process we use to help clients figure out their primary target industry or interest group. Then we use the same process to pinpoint a client’s niche speciality that’s differentiated and based on their target’s pain point. The search game is won when we go and ask those exact prospects what words they use to think of their pain. It is not won, however if the whole strategy of a business is dependent on the highest hit search words. For example, one client who owned an organizing company had been told by their SEO expert that the highest searches were for closet organizing. Based on this gem of information, they changed their website, company name and all marketing efforts to revolve around closets. Low and behold, after we did the strategic insights work, we found that garage organizing was a way more profitable and differentiated positioning and specialty. After sinking thousands and years into the wrong niche, they had been duped by SEO. So be specific about your search words but do it strategically.

Big Data Is Coming

The last thing I’ll mention in the war against ad blockers is the use of big data. One woman who presented at last week’s business conference had made a living out of selling segmented and meaningful data out of the people who used a mall’s free wifi. More advanced AI and technology will be needed in all your selling and marketing tools to figure out what people are doing and how you can get them to buy from you. If you don’t invest in big data, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to get through to your audience.
So don’t despair if technology is making your job harder to sell, look at where it’s also making it easier.
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