Marketing 2.0

Let’s start with what we already know… With the advent of the Internet, and even more so with Web 2.0, the world has shrunk: vastly different cultures and people are connected in ways never thought possible. It is no longer strange to have friends, family and acquaintances in Indonesia, Moscow and Peru and interact with all of them at the same time. In a sense, humanity has been brought closer together and the catalytic adhesive is Social Media.

To understand how this affects marketing, let’s go a little further back in the marketing time line. At the very beginning, before the first billboard went up and nobody promised you that their products could give you a six-pack, more hair and a sex life. People interacted with their local store owners and trusted their advice on products. One-on-one friendships were made with the only brand custodian available, the store-keeper. Other than that they also trusted the advice and referrals of their friends.

Word-of-mouth is and always will be king; and deeper than that, the relationship between product/brand and consumer must be based on trust. It doesn’t matter what the brand says to consumers. In the end it’s what consumers say about the brand. It’s the reason why sites like hellopeter.com are so popular; they dig the dirt on any brand which doesn’t deliver on an advertised promise and the consumer truly is king. No marketer would want their precious brand plastered in a negative light on that site or any other.

We’re just emerging from an industrial era which was plagued by the ubiquitous communication objective which engendered the philosophy of “as much exposure as possible”. Hence, our landscapes are flooded with advertising at every turn.

Right now, personal, individual and intimate communication with consumers is being increasingly valued and Web 2.0 is facilitating this shift in the brand-consumer relationship. At the beginning of this trend corporations and Brands spreading false word-of-mouth via blogs, etc. had been slammed and have had major chunks of their brand equity lost because of the mistrust created between the brand and the consumer via these bogus attempts to persuade them to buy their product.

The brands don’t call the shots in this new landscape, the consumers do. Social media makes it easier to get honest feedback from every corner of the globe. All in all it falls back to what exactly are you offering, and is it good enough for me?Intrinsic value is what resonates.

But marketers shouldn’t see social media as the be-all and end-all of new-age technology, it merely needs to included in their consideration set as a new opportunity to deliver real value to a very knowledgeable target market, and the product should live up to the hype. Brands are ideas, and more often than not consumers are not buying a product, they’re buying the idea behind it.

Mass media will always have its place as the medium of choice for communicating to the masses. The real challenge for marketers in this new environment is to find out “What is the most effective media mix (social and otherwise) in order to deliver the brand message?”

Three Focus points for Marketers on Web 2.0
Firstly, marketers need to see Social Media as a tool; another channel in which to engage the target market and not merely facilitate a one-way conversation. The most effective implementation of this would be via clever brand-related PR tactics over these channels. But caution is paramount; today’s consumers are increasingly marketing savvy and can smell bullshit a mile away.

Secondly, the gathering of research information, statistics like what a particular target market is watching, eating, reading, which places they hang out at, etc. are extremely valuable when designing campaign strategies.

And finally, start your brand’s own social network, blog, Twitter account, Facebook Page, etc. to get right to your target market with a niche social media offering with which consumers can directly interact with the brand itself. So far, I know of only one brand which has gone this route. I do foresee many brands following, although at the moment many brands are fearful to tread down this new path, some brands don’t even have their own websites or domains.

So how does Web 2.0 affect the future of Marketing?
Web 2.0 has pushed the entire concept of marketing right back to where it began, albeit on an entirely different level. “Friends” in our new era have been redefined by sites like MySpace and Facebook. Instead of your trusted shop owner or the friendly neighbour, advice is now available instantly via “tweets” on Twitter, Facebook notes and status updates, blog posts, etc.

The fact remains that consumers have gone back to the basics when it comes to product/brand choice, and unfortunately, it is not the brands themselves they are turning to… it’s their social networks.

So how are you going to become a part of your target market’s social network?