Signaling strategies tell consumers what to look for. Examples of signaling strategies include celebrity and political endorsements, large scale ad campaigns and bestseller lists. It sends a message to the consumer that “(x) product or service is cool, popular, good, important – others are into it, and I can be too .” It signals its OK.
In Seth Godin’s most recent post, he examines how marketers try to game these signals to their advantage, and how the reality of the perceived popularity may be very different than it seems. He also gives 3 valuable tips on why you need to care about the increasing amount of effort spent gaming the signals.
He explains:
Once a signaling strategy is seen to be effective, we seek to game it. 25 years ago, driving cross country to go to my first day of work at Spinnaker Software (I was the 30th employee) I drove through Chicago. And I passed a Spinnaker billboard. Wow! This company was going somewhere if they had billboards all over the country. When I got to work in Boston two days later, I discovered that this was the one and only billboard they had in the country, strategically erected on the road to the big CES trade show. They were signaling the buyers of the big stores.
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