As the economy recovers and technology continues to offer consumers new ways to manage their on-the-go lifestyle, business owners and marketing directors are faced with the daily obstacle of trying to reach these exact consumers! So many vehicles, each with their own demo and factors to be considered. While your product/service may make some decisions a no-brainer, most don’t have that luxury!

While most mass media can still be used as such, the fact of the matter is that due to technology advances, the future effectiveness of each mass medium is now in flux. Not everyone can effectively predict the future, but having a sustainable mindset will have you ahead of the crowd! Where can you put your marketing efforts and know people will still see them?

For most consumer-driven companies, an effective marketing mix consists of a mass medium or two and some very targeted marketing efforts. My thought process is as follows. What is NOT going anywhere anytime soon? Better yet, what isn’t going to be invented to fragment the advertising industry any further! I can promise you a time machine or transportation portal certainly isn’t going to be invented anytime soon! Additionally, a new social media site may be unveiled, but the internet is here to stay! Therein lies two media that I personally feel are the most sustainable places to put your message. A solid presence on the internet (your website, new media, & Google Adwords) and on the streets that consumers of all demographics use to commute every day of their lives!!

Agree with me? Disagree with me? Where do you think is the most sustainable place to put your message in a world that is driven by the ability to cram as much into one day as possible?

If a business has a desire to create this, then maybe they need to blend old media with new.  Take our product for example, what if an advertiser used the massive reach of a transit campaign to promote a giveaway on their Facebook Fan page?  Using buses is one of the greatest tools left for reaching a large amount of consumers in your marketplace.  Putting this reach together with the ability to start a relationship with them through social media may be just the spark a business needs to impact the social media scene in a big way.  Imagine driving all over your market and seeing a transit campaign with 40-60 displays barking a brand and a contest to you.  Win (idea here).  Become a Fan to learn more.  Simple and effective.  Potentially thousands of people could join in the first week alone.  Making your online real estate even more valuable.

Media has changed in a major way over the past decade.  Consumers and their media habits have changed in a major way, but one thing that remains the same is a successful media strategy involves a mix of media.  So the next time the conversation turns to social media and getting results for your business; ask yourself how I can leverage the old media to get jump start on new media?

Have you seen any great ideas or ways businesses have leveraged transit advertising to impact a social media strategy?  If so we would love to hear from you.  Leave a comment below.

How about taking your entire fleet of wrapped vehicles for a tour of your market?

Have your employees drive your vehicle wraps one after the next all around your market. Do you think 10-20 vehicle wraps will catch any attention? My bet is that it will act as a bigger media than some of the more traditional forms of media you may be purchasing.

How about rewarding your employees and turning it into a marketing event?

What if you gave all your employees tickets to a popular sporting event in your market? The only catch to the employee is that they have to drive their vehicle wrap and park in a predetermined location. Imagine the impact when you have 10-20 vehicle wraps hogging up an entire area providing a ton of advertising impact for your brand. And don’t forget to leave together. As traffic from the event lets out and the streets are full of cars and people your 10-20 vehicle wraps will be lined up one after the other providing huge exposure for your brand.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Google lifted the curtain today on a host of new features that incorporate time and place into its search results, including the coming integration of Facebook and MySpace status updates into search results.

The search giant also demonstrated its latest innovations in mobile search, including an augmented-reality application for it Android mobile-operating-system platform that can identify objects such as a book, product or piece of artwork and deliver relevant information about them.

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I recently received a call from a prospect who works in the infomercial space. They get plenty of traffic to their Web site, by virtue of the promotion on television, but they wanted to speak with me about conversion rate optimization.

While I shared some thoughts on the topic, and referred them to my friend Tim Ash who literally wrote the book on landing page optimization, these people might still want to consider SEO. However, this SEO effort would have a different focus: owning the top 10 results for mentions of their brand.

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