kurai_kage

mifold said:

My business relies on targeted advertising.

Please don't abuse me here … I hate a lot of online advertising.

But on the other hand, I'm not sure what to do post iOS 14.

We sell compact and portable car seats for children so the seat can stay with the child, not the car. This is important as more and more parents choose to 'use' cars, rather than own cars (Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, Turo, etc.)

But we are a small and new startup, there is very little awarenesses of what we offer. In order for us to save the lives of children in cars, we need to advertise to the people who are most likely to be our relevant market. 

Facebook, Instagram and Google allows us to get our messages in front of parents and other caregivers of children aged 4+. 

What should we do to cost-effectively generate awareness now?

What would you have done pre-internet?  Would you have put an ad in Wired magazine?  Men's Health?  Guns and Ammo?  Would you have made a commercial for your product and slotted that into WWE or Wimbledon? That wouldn't make sense right?  You'd have wanted an ad in Good Parenting, or the commercial appearing in a show with a high probability to include viewers that may be interested in your product.

Targeted advertising is chasing people around, showing them an ad frequently completely out of context with what they are currently focused on.  It is highly invasive and people do not appreciate "the convenience" of potentially slightly more applicable ads.  

Would you appreciate a supermarket employing people to monitor what you buy, either surreptitiously in person or from an array of cameras saturating the store, and then sending you mail or targeted advertising?  Some people might say 'sure that seems swell, I want a discount on lemons, I like lemons.'  That person would be happy right up to the point they begin receiving repeated flyers for hemorrhoid cream, adult diapers, or generic viagra.  I would be willing to go out on a limb and suggest that the majority of people have a negative impression of targeted ads, even those lovers of lemons, because the ads are chasing them and appearing out of context.

What should you do to generate awareness now?  Try focusing on targeting a more proper venue for your ads, locations where everyone visiting that page/location has the potential to be interested in your product, as opposed to chasing the users with individual targeted advertising.  Go back to the pre-internet advertising roots and apply those to internet advertising.

georgie01 said:

Whatever someone thinks of Trump as president, he’s a very successful businessman and knows how to negotiate far better than anyone of us including our favourite government leaders (anyone wanting to bring up some of Trump’s business failures please spare us your ignorance).

Growth takes sacrifice, sometimes painful, especially in a situation like this where we’re entrenched in problematic ways due to past government leaders not having the business sense or courage to stand up to China’s tactics. Regardless of what you think of Trump’s other policies, we should all be thanking him for having the courage to rock the boat with China.  

Tell that to our soybean farmers or any of the many other small and medium businesses that have suffered under his very successful business acumen.  Those negotiation skills are on display for sure.  Even large businesses have not been thanking him for rocking the boat, and now he is going to help out even further by knocking some of our top businesses down a few notches by exercising his negotiation skills further.  Lucky us to have such a great leader... /s

For a contrast to this great example of what multi-million/billion dollar companies should be doing, I'll leave it to you to look up Hobby Lobby, also making headlines...

Nobody mentioned Tesla and while they have a huge screen, autopilot is typically available.  I feel much better about grabbing a drink or taking a handsfree call while the car is driving and I'm only supervising it.  The few times I've felt that I needed to interact with the screen (manually switch on headlights for roads that advise it), I quickly switch the car to autopilot before doing so.

Homekit with secure video support is the only way to peak my interest in these cameras enough for a purchase.