The New Second Screen Marketing Strategy
Still haven’t heard of second screen marketing? If you’re thinking of ways to promote your business, you should know that marketers and developers alike have been raving about the possibilities the second screen marketing strategy presupposes for the promoting sector. A quick research session online will prove that enthusiasm around the issue has been an ever-growing phenomenon in the past months; nonetheless, all signs show that second screen marketing is becoming the hottest thing on the advertising scene, as big names have already made successful use of the strategy. So if you like being ahead of the game, sit back and read further…
What “Second Screen Marketing” Stands For
First of all, let’s define our terms. What do we mean by “second screen marketing”? Like the name itself suggests, “second screen” basically stands for an auxiliary screen you use when watching TV. The second screen can be a smart phone, a tablet or even your laptop – any device that allows you to extend the TV-viewing experience into an interactive one can become a second screen device. The term also implies that we’re talking about a device that is constantly connected to another main screen, represented by none other than the common TV set. So far, so good! Yet, there’s a catch to it. When we develop the concept of second screen interactivity between the TV and another device and then pair it with the possibility of promoting content through this very interactive experience, things get interesting.
Second Screen Marketing and the “Consumer Attention Crisis”
Recently, the marketing sector has been nostalgic of the times when the consumer’s attention was an easy thing to attract through marketing-oriented content. Last year there was even talk of a full-fledged “consumer attention crisis”, that had real negative consequences for the industry. It seems that we’re dealing with the consumer’s desensitisation towards canonical marketing strategies, in that succesful marketing content increasingly demands a high level of personalization, as well as prior research into consumer preferences. Consequently, the standard consumer’s profile has also changed, becoming more selective in what content he now chooses to consume. Keeping this in mind, let’s see how second screen marketing offers a solution to marketers’ worries about efficient marketing-oriented content.
What Strategies Does Second Screen Marketing Use?
Second screen marketing constitutes the new-found hope of all marketers in making TV and online promotion pass on to the next level. We’re dealing with strategies that review the very nature of marketing-oriented content, as well as its relation towards consumer engagement. To understand why second screen marketing brings forth such optimism, we need to take a look at TV-viewing behavioral patterns. Studies show that TV achieves the highest sales-rate as a result of transmitting marketing content. Analysts have found that if not during actual TV programs, then at least during commercial breaks, a great number of those who watch TV will constantly make use of a second device to browse for TV-related content. Even more, people tend to shift attention from the TV to another screen about 27 times per hour, showing that multi-tasking is really a popular activity among people watching TV. Second screen marketing adapts visual promoting strategies accordingly, placing consumer behavioural patterns at its center.
A Whole New Consumer-Content Relationship through Second Screen Marketing
How does this work? For example, by integrating TV-content into second screen games. Let’s start by taking the example of integrating TV-content into second screen games. Or by engaging viewers into social-network debates about the content being transmitting through the main screen. This is to say that second screen marketing uses a whole new perspective on the content-consumer contact. By attempting to direct the user’s second screen activity so that it is related to what is being watched on the tube, second screen marketing aims at a voluntary, and thus much more intimate engagement of the user, as it makes use of content that has already been filtered through the consumer’s personal preferences. Through the second screen marketing strategy, the necessary condition of providing attractive, personalized content seems to have been met.
What Second Screen Marketing Brings to the Table
Despite its novelty, there are some platforms that have created an antecedent in successfully employing second screen marketing strategies. Twitter is one of such “pioneers” and it still continues to develop new ways of using these methods. It seems clear that if second screen marketing is not THE new direction in TV and online marketing, it is at least one of the most important ones that have emerged recently. We can only wait and see how this new direction will be carried out in the big-scale marketing scene. Along the years, we have learned that if there is room for improving marketing techniques, solutions will be found. Second screen marketing will surely make no exception to this rule.
