Marketing After the Web 2 0 Tsunami

Web 2.0 arrived and immediately redefined the way marketers function on the net. Marketing after the Tsunami better known as Web 2.0 now takes a lot more interaction. Marketers in the past were satisfied to co-exist in anonymity because it gave them the power to promote their products without exposing themselves. Web 2.0 has changed internet marketer's approach to delivering their products to the masses. It has definitely open the doors to some new marketing strategies, some good and some definitely bad. The question we need to answer is; Has Web 2.0's takeover of the marketing arena improved the business as a whole or opened internet marketing to the less skillful.

Internet marketing was base on a simple of foundation of generating traffic to your website using a well optimized website. The more people you could reach by using SEO methods or PPC, the more your business stood a chance to succeed. The use of certain eye catching headlines and visuals were also effective, but you had to get your audience to your site first before you could use those marketing methods. Once you got someone to your site you then had to make sure that your site had great content in order to create a repeat visitor. The foundation of the internet has not changed, You still need all those components to capture your visitors, but the approach has changed.

Web 2.0 has transform internet marketing by creating a social environment that gives marketers more visibility with their potential prospects. Social marketing has become the core of the web 2.0 movement. Powerhouse websites like My Space, Facebook, and You Tube has forced even the old school marketer to break down. Nowadays if you don't have one of the powerhouse websites in your marketing portfolio, chances are you are leaving money on the table. Making business or personal contacts using these site is a viral marketing tool that is unparallel to any other strategy. The only problem I have found with the Web 2.0 phenomenon is that your information is accessible to any and everyone. The negative aspects of having your information disclose, is the unsolicited intrusion from spammers who send fraudulent or sexually based ads. If you don't mind being flashed or spam occasionally then Web 2.0 is definitely a positive.

In conclusion I believe that Marketing After the Web 2.0 Tsunami has expanded the internet in a good way. Putting a face to your product or business is a win-win situation, the customer can feel more secure and at the same time you can brand yourself as a good marketer. For those of you who do not wish to get involved in Web 2.0 strategies, the internet marketing foundation is still in tact. Marketing techniques such as SEO, PPC, and email marketing are still the most effective internet marketing tools. If you are an old school marketer you should take add the new tactics to your current marketing to generate a marketing Tsunami of your own. The addition of social marketing strategies will not hurt the business but rather expand it to an even larger market.

By Marc Marseille

Companies Are Not Ready, Willing And Able For Marketing 2.0

Most companies looking at Social Media and Web 2.0 see it as a media channel to broadcast their messages into. This includes most Governments and Associations. This is the wrong reason to do it and the wrong strategy.

If your company is looking at engaging in the social channels, but simply wants to tell the gathered audience about their brands, messages, products and services, here's the one best piece of advice to make that happen: advertise on those channels.

You can do either mass advertising or you can target ads specifically to the types of people who might be more inclined to act on your messages. Companies like Facebook and Google offer these types of targeting. The common attitude is, "let's post our videos on YouTube," or "everyone's on Twitter, we should be on Twitter too," and what comes after is a closed, one-way broadcasting channel that does not engender the shared values of these social systems, including: commenting, being open to differing opinions, responding and - most importantly - making changes based on the feedback and conversation that is taking place.

This is the primary reason why most companies have epic fails on these channels: they're broadcasting not engaging, responding and adapting.

Don't ask for people's opinions or be in channels where that back and forth takes place and not do anything about it. It's insulting and it's a huge waste of both your time and the people who have connected to you.

A lot of companies talk about "opening up" or "letting the information free" but what it boils down to is a couple of inches more liberal than their traditional marketing and communications. Have you seen some of the topics of conversation listed at recent Government, Association, Marketing and Public Relations seminars? They hint at how open the topic will be, but the subtle undertones of the conference description and the speakers asked to present stink of, "how can your company understand what people are saying and how your company can control the chaos and broadcast into it."

It's the wrong way to be looking at things.

Here are the bigger questions your organization needs to be asking before entering these channels:

- Are we willing to not just listen, but to respond and adapt based on the back and forth?
- Are we willing to become active participants - not just in our channels but in the other channels and spaces as well?
- Are we willing to change the focus from being on our company to being about everybody - us, them and the entire community?
- Are we willing to be participants with just as much fervour and passion when it's not good for us, but good for the community or the industry as a whole?
- Are we willing to be open?
- Are we willing to be really, really open and transparent?

Individuals have an obvious and very real reason to be skeptical of brands and companies in the social media sphere. The majority of companies have done a very poor job of changing that perspective because - for the most part - they are simply using these tools to broadcast their messages in a uni-directional fashion.

Most companies see these channels as another mass media tool (after all, they are going where the masses are), this forces them to look at the wrong metrics (still), like how many people are seeing their message and what are they doing? Versus, who is seeing their messages, what are they feedbacking and how quickly can the company change their business to adapt and grow?

By Mitch Joel

Elements of an Optimal Interactive Marketing Strategy

The elements of a good 2.0 interactive marketing strategy can be expressed as:

1) Targeted content
2) Distribution to the right channel(s).

The first step is gathering the data that will inform you about how to target your content.

Understanding how consumers use the web in general and your site in particular is key to your strategy.

Creating targeted messaging based on that understanding is an iterative process best guided by a analytics package. Analytics software has become much more intuitive to navigate over the last two to three years and should be considered foundational to any interactive marketing strategy.

The next step is to segment your audience. The more specifically you can identify your audience segments, the better your messaging will work to bring in the results you’re looking for.

Once you have identified basic characteristics of your audience segments, create a persona for each that you can get to “know” over time.

Your strategy for creating targeted content will be based on the personas you’ve created. This is where it helps to have a good interactive marketing strategist on board.

One option would be to optimize and target content manually for each person. This is manageable if you have only one or two people and clearly defined areas of your site that they’re likely to visit.

For multiple person, setting up a personalization engine will make optimizing your messaging for each much more manageable. Using your analytics data and hypotheses on how each person will interact on the site and off, your strategist can set up business rules within the personalization engine that will serve up a different experience to each audience segment.

The interactive content you create will be individualized to meet the needs of each segment.

Content might include RSS news feeds, audio and/or video podcasts, webinars, product demos, interactive tools, white papers, blogs or articles.

An effort should be made to see that these pieces of content get cataloged by external news
aggregators, industry-specific directories and search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) of your site and its content will increase the chances that your
content will be indexed by aggregators, directories and search engines.

Providing ways for consumers to interact, personalize and author their own experience of your site if possible is an ideal way to let them contribute to the personalization process and collect data on how they best like to use your site.

Creating an effective interactive marketing strategy that meets the needs of the Web 2.0
audience takes into account each of these elements.

The good news is that, aside from a few niche industries, not many businesses online are doing it as well as they could be.

Implication for Interactive Marketing Strategy

Web 2.0 represents an enhanced level of user sophistication. Users who are subjected to an almost endless stream of messaging of widely varying quality and credibility have to develop instant radar for authentic and credible communication . Also, users are becoming accustomed to authoring and personalizing their own experience and using multiple online channels to access the kinds of experience they’re looking for.

The advent of Web 2.0 and its technology has broad implications for interactive marketing strategy.

Consumers who are sophisticated about messaging (and if they’’re not now, they will be)
will make quick judgments about what is, and is not, meaningful to them.

To create an interactive marketing strategy that will reach them, delivering personalized, down-to earth, individually targeted messages is a must.


Generic, broadly targeted messaging that might have worked when the outbound messaging communication bar was set relatively low isn’’t going to cut it in a competitive information marketplace.

If your message isn’’t meaningful to your consumer, it will likely be ignored altogether.
Your interactive marketing strategy should also consider taking advantage of the
multiple distribution channels online, including RSS feeds, podcasts, video seminars,
search engines and blogs.

Your customers are likely to be scanning for the information they’’re looking for (and if not now, they will be) by searching RSS and podcast feed aggregators, blogging sites, video sites, and product and service reviews. If your information appears in one of these channels, it stands a good chance of showing up in Google, Yahoo! and other search engines. If not, you should look into optimizing your content for search engines as well.

Source:Pamela Lund, CEO PL Interactive, Inc