Anyone who’s taken a Marketing 101 class knows that the 4P’s of marketing are: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Promotion referring primarily to advertising and PR.

The purpose of advertising used to be to promote a company and its products. That was when it was difficult for people to find all the options available to fulfill their needs. Advertising was actually helpful in that respect. It informed them (although obviously completely biased) about what products they should buy. Advertising was further enhanced to actually be entertaining and not merely a sales pitch. And when advertising was refined to communicate a Unique Selling Proposition, consumers could easily determine which product was right for them.

Then everything changed. We now have the ability to search for a near limitless array of products instantly and simply look at their reviews to find the crowd-sourced best option for our needs. We don’t need advertising to tell us what to buy. And we know better that its message often obfuscates the benefits one realistically experiences. Promotion is a fairly useless marketing activity, in and of itself, now.

Advertising itself, I propose, does still have a significant place. The purpose of advertising, just as it was before, is truly to provide value to the consumer. It used to be enough to announce a product by extolling its benefits in a creative way to provide value. But that’s not the case anymore. Consumers don’t need that. They can get more reliable results from a 10-second search.

So how can advertising better provide value?

A shift to content marketing is definitely a step in the right direction. People don’t want to be sold, but enlightened. Native advertising has the potential to be valuable if we, as marketers, don’t lose the trust of the consumer (unfortunately, more than likely we will). Focusing on the brand experience, rather than running more ads, can definitely help as well.

But I don’t think we’ve really figured it out yet. It’s a major paradigm shift through a path so very undefined. But it is an exciting time for marketers. Let’s hope we don’t screw it up.