Hi everyone
Someone asked me last week why social networking was taking off, which got me thinking about the BIG ideas driving marketing change at the moment. So this week I'd thought I'd list my top ten most influential digital ideas:
#1. Permission Marketing: About 10 years ago Seth Godin wrote a book called Permission Marketing which highlighted a new marketing approach, particularly online. The idea is that consumers provide marketers with the permission to send them certain types of promotional messages. For example, they ask permission to send advertisements to prospective customers. Many marketers felt that this was a more efficient use of their resources because advertisements are only sent to people that are actually interested in the product. And people feel better about the messages because they actually want to see them. This has had major impact on areas such as direct, email and mobile marketing - including the formation of opt-in & opt-out databases and other permission-based marketing strategies.
#2. The Long Tail: I'll quote from Wikipedia here: "The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon.com or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities. The distribution and inventory costs of these businesses allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group that purchases a large number of "non-hit" items is the demographic called the Long Tail." What this idea implies is that online there is often a niche for your business - in almost any business that you're in. Including now social networking sites, finance, travel...you name it.
#3. The Tipping Point: Not just a digital marketing concept, but online is where this idea really seems to have taken hold. The Tipping Point is the moment at which a niche idea or product becomes mainstream. A popular idea from Malcolm Gladwell's book, it explores the reasons why some ideas take off and others don't, and also the role the internet has to play in reaching that point. For example, the iPhone has now definitely reached the tipping point (even before its recent launch by True here in Thailand). My prediction for something to reach the tipping point soon is twitter. It has yet to really catch on here, but I think it will, very soon.
#4. Buzz Marketing: Most people will know this one, but it is never the less an important idea worth repeating. With the transformation to a Web 2.0 (see # 8) world, customers are the ones controlling and driving the message because most people believe in what other users say rather than what brands say. Often referred to as word of mouth marketing, and spawning other ideas such as viral marketing and influencer marketing, buzz marketing relies on producing content and communications that allow the message to be viewed, shared or even mashed up by customers to maximise its impact and pass-on-ability. Check out this great example. The challenge with buzz marketing is in the measurement of a campaign's success, which is the focus of a lot of conversations now.
#5. Wikinomics: The BIG idea here is problem solving, creating or sharing by using mass collaboration. Evolving from the IT sector and concept of open source programming, it is grown into a phenomenon that covers everything from the online encyclopaedia http://www.wikipedia.com/ , online clothing from Threadless or even online social movements. The beauty of this crowd sourcing concept is that it often relies on many people with a shared passion to cooperate and improve a situation or solve a problem - for the joy of it. The idea of wikis is now being applied to almost every project that requires ongoing improvement and user input.
#6. Collaborative Filtering: Collaboration again - only this time the issue is not creating something but finding out what I like. How can I find what's right for me, easily and reliably on the internet with so much information? The answer is by listening to other people just like me.This idea has fuelled the development of taste recommendations on books or music sites (Barnes & Noble, http://www.ilike.com/) and is behind things like 'favourite articles' on online news sites like http://www.digg.com/ or critic review sites like Epinion. It's what users want that matters, not what editors or owners guess they might like.
#7. User-Generated Content: Moving in the same direction, the production of online content is now also shifting from companies into the hands of end users. The growth of consumer content - in the form of digital media technologies such as digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis is in line with the development of two-way conversational media. That is, people wanting content which they feel is more unique, relevant and participatory then one-way corporate communications of old. Sites like http://www.tripadvisor.com/, http://www.wordpress.com/ and http://www.reddit.com/ are great examples. And most marketing campaigns and sites now as well rely on the relevance and impact of this content to keep them fresh.
#8. Web 2.0: Some people hate this word but I don't - I think it is a good way to summarize the movement (quoting Terry Flew) "from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on tagging." Check out more here, but every idea in this list encapsulates the movement to Web 2.0. Interesting to note how each industry now applies this new web evolution to their business using terms such as as Travel 2.0, Finance 2.0, Automotive 2.0, Telecommunications 2.0 - even Charity 2.0 and Mothering 2.0!! Okay, maybe I do understand why people do think this idea is over-hyped.
#9. Folksonomy: Folksonomic tagging is intended to make a body of information increasingly easy to search, discover, and navigate over time. For example a site like http://www.delicious.com/ . What it does is take all your bookmarks, all the pages on the internet from web sites to key pages, and puts them all in one place. Then it classifies them so it's easy to find. So you type 'marketing' or 'art' or 'cats' and all the information based on that area are in one place. You can also follow what other people are tagging and learn from them. Yet another idea that is making the web easier, simpler and more fun.
#10. Groundswell: I've put this in because it's an idea from a book I've just read of the same name. The Groundswell is simply another way of talking about explosion of social media - from Myspace to YouTube, Cyworld to Flickr - and it describes the phenomenon as something happening from the ground up. Like most things, us marketers are always trying to catch up with the developments that people are exploring online. In my next post I'll tackle some ways marketers are trying to deal with these social networking developments and create more connected marketing campaigns.
Speak to you then
Cheers, Rob
Someone asked me last week why social networking was taking off, which got me thinking about the BIG ideas driving marketing change at the moment. So this week I'd thought I'd list my top ten most influential digital ideas:
#1. Permission Marketing: About 10 years ago Seth Godin wrote a book called Permission Marketing which highlighted a new marketing approach, particularly online. The idea is that consumers provide marketers with the permission to send them certain types of promotional messages. For example, they ask permission to send advertisements to prospective customers. Many marketers felt that this was a more efficient use of their resources because advertisements are only sent to people that are actually interested in the product. And people feel better about the messages because they actually want to see them. This has had major impact on areas such as direct, email and mobile marketing - including the formation of opt-in & opt-out databases and other permission-based marketing strategies.
#2. The Long Tail: I'll quote from Wikipedia here: "The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon.com or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities. The distribution and inventory costs of these businesses allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group that purchases a large number of "non-hit" items is the demographic called the Long Tail." What this idea implies is that online there is often a niche for your business - in almost any business that you're in. Including now social networking sites, finance, travel...you name it.
#3. The Tipping Point: Not just a digital marketing concept, but online is where this idea really seems to have taken hold. The Tipping Point is the moment at which a niche idea or product becomes mainstream. A popular idea from Malcolm Gladwell's book, it explores the reasons why some ideas take off and others don't, and also the role the internet has to play in reaching that point. For example, the iPhone has now definitely reached the tipping point (even before its recent launch by True here in Thailand). My prediction for something to reach the tipping point soon is twitter. It has yet to really catch on here, but I think it will, very soon.
#4. Buzz Marketing: Most people will know this one, but it is never the less an important idea worth repeating. With the transformation to a Web 2.0 (see # 8) world, customers are the ones controlling and driving the message because most people believe in what other users say rather than what brands say. Often referred to as word of mouth marketing, and spawning other ideas such as viral marketing and influencer marketing, buzz marketing relies on producing content and communications that allow the message to be viewed, shared or even mashed up by customers to maximise its impact and pass-on-ability. Check out this great example. The challenge with buzz marketing is in the measurement of a campaign's success, which is the focus of a lot of conversations now.
#5. Wikinomics: The BIG idea here is problem solving, creating or sharing by using mass collaboration. Evolving from the IT sector and concept of open source programming, it is grown into a phenomenon that covers everything from the online encyclopaedia http://www.wikipedia.com/ , online clothing from Threadless or even online social movements. The beauty of this crowd sourcing concept is that it often relies on many people with a shared passion to cooperate and improve a situation or solve a problem - for the joy of it. The idea of wikis is now being applied to almost every project that requires ongoing improvement and user input.
#6. Collaborative Filtering: Collaboration again - only this time the issue is not creating something but finding out what I like. How can I find what's right for me, easily and reliably on the internet with so much information? The answer is by listening to other people just like me.This idea has fuelled the development of taste recommendations on books or music sites (Barnes & Noble, http://www.ilike.com/) and is behind things like 'favourite articles' on online news sites like http://www.digg.com/ or critic review sites like Epinion. It's what users want that matters, not what editors or owners guess they might like.
#7. User-Generated Content: Moving in the same direction, the production of online content is now also shifting from companies into the hands of end users. The growth of consumer content - in the form of digital media technologies such as digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis is in line with the development of two-way conversational media. That is, people wanting content which they feel is more unique, relevant and participatory then one-way corporate communications of old. Sites like http://www.tripadvisor.com/, http://www.wordpress.com/ and http://www.reddit.com/ are great examples. And most marketing campaigns and sites now as well rely on the relevance and impact of this content to keep them fresh.
#8. Web 2.0: Some people hate this word but I don't - I think it is a good way to summarize the movement (quoting Terry Flew) "from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on tagging." Check out more here, but every idea in this list encapsulates the movement to Web 2.0. Interesting to note how each industry now applies this new web evolution to their business using terms such as as Travel 2.0, Finance 2.0, Automotive 2.0, Telecommunications 2.0 - even Charity 2.0 and Mothering 2.0!! Okay, maybe I do understand why people do think this idea is over-hyped.
#9. Folksonomy: Folksonomic tagging is intended to make a body of information increasingly easy to search, discover, and navigate over time. For example a site like http://www.delicious.com/ . What it does is take all your bookmarks, all the pages on the internet from web sites to key pages, and puts them all in one place. Then it classifies them so it's easy to find. So you type 'marketing' or 'art' or 'cats' and all the information based on that area are in one place. You can also follow what other people are tagging and learn from them. Yet another idea that is making the web easier, simpler and more fun.
#10. Groundswell: I've put this in because it's an idea from a book I've just read of the same name. The Groundswell is simply another way of talking about explosion of social media - from Myspace to YouTube, Cyworld to Flickr - and it describes the phenomenon as something happening from the ground up. Like most things, us marketers are always trying to catch up with the developments that people are exploring online. In my next post I'll tackle some ways marketers are trying to deal with these social networking developments and create more connected marketing campaigns.
Speak to you then
Cheers, Rob
Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com
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