the next big thing

I went to the adtech Sydney – it was a 2 day conference on digital advertising – where we are now and were to. I’ve got a few pages of notes, I’m not going to refer to in preference of giving my over all impressions.

Basically the sessions got me thinking – a good thing (some might say), as ideas are what makes me get inspired (the food was quite uninspiring though).

A really interesting point (from Nick Brien’s talk) got the brain firing – the idea that crisis situations (really economic crisis here) brings about innovation, generates new ideas – a ripe time for invention out of necessity is upon us! The pressure must really make us get creative. So rather than see doom and gloom we could be asking ourselves what opportunities are available now. It’s a new market with new needs. Where there’s gaps there’s new money to be made (and there’s a lot more gaps because the landscape has changed so much, so the old is less likely to work in the same way).

What else? Well a large part of the conference discussed the emergence of social media as a powerful platform tipping the relevance of traditional media. Everyone that took this line was careful not to discount traditional media, but generally speaking a big billboard or a TVC alone just won’t have the same influence it once did. It’s about trust, Sharyn Smith from Soup put it something like: without too much thought, we’d buy that detergent our mum recommends but we’d need a lot more convincing if a recommendation comes from a brand.

Case in point – my wife did her internet research for a stroller, blog after blog after forum, wiki etc etc she found the perfect stroller (a lot of mum’s liked it). She hardly looked at the actual sites that offered the product she was interested in. So apparently the destination page is really not that important after all. The deeper point is that products and campaigns need to stand up to our ever demanding need and ability to recognize the authentic, human element – if it can’t stand up to this, it’s likely to fall especially in this demanding economy.

One last point, web 2.0 is dying so welcome mobile / portable / social web 3.0 – mix it with social media that better mimics our psychosocial behaviors and there exists the next big thing.

3 Online Marketing tips for the new economy

What’s online marketing got to do with happiness in the workplace – well without a lot of business, things like happiness at work take a step back, marketing too. So marketing, as significant driver of business keeps things going. The interesting thing is a lot of the techniques online gurus swear by is about using the age old technique of integrity. 

The fact that we’re so inundated every day with marketing messages infiltrating our online personal spaces, means we all get very well trained on how to spot a sales pitch disguised as something other than it is. We’re all experts and can spot a duozey a mile away (what if you responded to every spammy email that hits your in-box?) 

So what’s the trick then – just a bit of integrity. If it’s good say so. If not, perhaps its best to find something worth selling!

Here’s my very brief list of some good tools for 2009:

1. Make use of social media – social media works as it replicates interaction with ‘real’ personalities – this aids trust and most of us will listen to a person over a cleverly crafted sales pitch. Read this article about Social media in 2009: http://www.scribd.com/doc/8944081/Social-Media-2009
2. Risk to say it boldly – Create online copy that risks an influx of comments and links (a form of link-baiting: http://www.jimwestergren.com/link-bait/ ). If you think it, say it boldly – stirring emotion will also stir activity
3. Automate lead generation – There’s some many simple online applications on the net right now that really reduce management time and lower costs – the trick is crafting things like email autoresponders with the same warm familiarity of a face to face meeting or phone call.

Here’s a few:

http://www.scribd.com (documents online)

http://www.basecamphq.com/ (online project management)

http://www.freshbooks.com (online invoicing)

http://www.pixelalchemy.com.au (Yes this is my plug – Develop a site with Business Console and integrate all your business systems into 1 – email marketing / auto responders / CRM / Online Sales / Website / Blog / Forums – It’s really how each of these things link together seamlessly that’s so exciting about this product )

http://www.3minuteangels.com (with all this cold hard computer stuff, lets not forget the power of touch – send a potential lead and Angel, warm them up to some good ideas of yours)