The Power of Now – Paradigm shift in Digital Marketing

For the initiated, and those who have wet their beaks in Digital Marketing, today’s times are really exciting. And yet, there is constant pressure for marketing strategies to evolve constantly. There is a big shift happening in the way information is served and utilized.

Information is now all about “newness” and “nowness”. It is dynamic, constantly reinventing itself to stay in the rat race for attention. It is just not about standalone pages or browsers anymore. It’s more about streaming content, about relevance in constant churn, about adding enhanced value to your user segment, all of these building a conversation for a symbiotic relationship with a user segment.

Streams of Data, Not just static pools

Much water has flown under the internet highway since the advent of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Social media networks have taken center stage and dynamic information is served and lapped up in myriad ways. The possibilities are endless – A chirpy tweet about an event real-time, a face-off with a corporate ambassador on face book, a stumble upon on your new proprietary IP micro site, a techno-rati-ing of your corporate blog, rank boost on a Wikipedia link etc.

Amid all this noise, it is quite important to make sense of the signals. Especially for B2B marketing which has to make sure that this shift in dynamics is effectively leveraged to generate awareness, drive leads and nurture relationships.

Swimming with the tide of dynamic information

The moot point here is whether this accent on immediacy of information holds intrinsic value for B2B marketing. Yes of course. Ignoring this new shift in information distribution would be a no brainer. The key here is to use these social streams to row people to your site and ensure the site is sticky enough for him to decide in your favor.

Social streams can help build reputation and trust that can help connect with your customers. In lots of ways it gives B2B marketers an easy way to participate in conversations that are about them. It is still early to tell though. Plunging into the stream would be the easy way to find out though.

This paradigm shift has come to stay and technology will be its prime driver. With Twitter going one up on Google on real time search stakes (an earthquake this minute appears faster in twitter than on Google) this information shift could forever change the way even a search result looks.

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Digital Media Marketing

The power of digital media (usually referred to online media) has inspired me a lot through these years or rather never ceases to amaze me!

In today’s discriminating and techno-savvy world, with almost every business accomplished through the internet, a company’s presence over the web has become mandatory or should I say ‘a crucial factor’?

Here are some of my observations how online channels are used by businesses today.

Realize

Based on my experience in this field (I’m not a techie thoughJ), I have found that very few companies have exploited digital media through their websites. I think every company needs to realize the importance of their presence on the web with the ability to act fast, engage a lot of creativity and utilize resources capable of delivering innovative ideas keeping in mind their budgetary constraints.

Web metrics play a crucial role in determining the type of content that can attract and hold a customer’s interest, make them stay on the same website for a long time and make them come back for more – ideally meeting the user demand. Today, static images and plain text are replaced with streaming media and much more interactive applications providing the customer with a personalized experience. I feel many companies are struggling to develop their web presence in making it into more productive, virtual and a truly aggressive weapon.

Though a company has a string of issues involved in managing their web presence effectively, they also have to emphasize on the digital media’s potential in transforming the entire market scenario thereby ensuring greater ROI.

I would also add that opportunities are in abundance for any company willing to try out on these lines!

React

As I was digging through an article on digital media, a particular sentence caught my attention which in fact is apparently inevitable. It says, ‘A website has 10 seconds to draw a visitor or the person will “go back to Google”’! Well, are we talking here about “Love at first site”? Yes we are!

In this fast changing world, one has to face the reality that none of the above turns into a reality so easily. Companies have to think from the customers’ perspective, analyze and optimize his or her experience on the website by tuning their infrastructure, improve data center capability and effectively manage content delivery, thereby nurturing relationships.

It’s a do-or-die situation where IT organizations especially need to focus and react immediately on enhancing the digital business in line with their business objectives.

Reap

There’s nothing compared to reaping enhanced ROI through comprehensive digital media marketing in today’s world which is going through a major financial recession. Though I might daresay that it would be a silver lining amidst the gloom, a well defined approach with a strategic network, leveraged intelligence and the intent of providing a rich customer experience ensures improved business responsiveness and better cost control.

Well I do want to write more on the other areas of digital media in the forth coming posts. I would honestly need your comments and suggestions.

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Virtual Reality and Marketing

Its interesting how (and how fast) certain things get adapted.

There have been these virtual reality worlds – SecondLife being the most prominent – that have caught on recently. They mostly serve the purpose of entertainment. Some “gurus” talk about how such virtual worlds will become a more intrinsic part of every person’s life.

So while that evolution is going on and all attention is focused on SecondLife and similar avatars (pun intended ), there is this tangential development that happens in, of all the places, in B2B marketing! Now you can host and attend virtual events, virtual tradeshows!

Fascinating, but will it really stick? This is the question I had when I saw the first versions of these virtual event platforms come out a couple of years ago. Well it seems it has. There seems to be quite some activity in this space. And especially in these cost-conscious, budget-slaugthering times, attending a virtual tradeshow seems like a great idea!

There are a few platforms that are fast gaining pace. And at Hexaware, we are participating in our first virtual tradeshow

SAP HR 2009 Virtual Conference (a virtual version of the real-life SAP HR 2009 conference that we took part in earlier this year). There is a registration fee (similar to the fee you would pay for the live conference, but there are no travel costs and hassles!).

See you at the conference! Link here -> http://www.hr2009.com/homepage.cfm?s=

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Some great conferences coming up!

Hexaware is participating in some really great conferences in May. May 4th to 6th we are at the Gartner Outsourcing and Vendor Management Summit in Las Vegas and May 3rd to 8th we are at the TDWI Global Conference in Chicago. While the Gartner conference is the definitive conference for the Outsourcing space, the TDWI conference is THE conference for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence/Analytics. Should be an exciting week.

Am looking forward to attending some insightful sessions at the Gartner Conference. And meeting Fran Karamouzis, Allie Young, Partha Iyenger – key Gartner analysts in this space. Will also attempt to tweet while at the conference.

And then the third week is again tradeshow time. We are participating at the LOMA/ACORD Insurance Systems Forum May 17- 19 in Orlando, Florida and at Eye For Travel’s Travel Distribution Summit, May 19 – 20 in London, UK. Another exciting week. I plan to tweet from the LOMA/ACORD conference too.

Follow Hexaware on Twitter here -> http://twitter.com/hxmktg

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