I attended the Internet World Exhibition & Conference which took place last week in London, UK. It looked at all things marketing but focused only on electronic marketing. It was attended by over 100 well known internet companies including Google, Facebook, Linkedin, and EBay. It was interesting to hear that online advertising spending in the UK was 2.8 billion pounds! While in 2004 it was just 653 million pounds. I’d thought I’d share a few points I noted that interested me and that I thought may be useful to you also. Over and over again I heard that too much digital marketing is designed and being used to stop the user from what they are trying to do. Businesses were advised to stop trying to interrupt what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.
There was a simple message that was being pushed throughout the whole event: Marketing as a service! Currently B2C use marketing as a service but B2B are slow in adopting this method. If we really know our customers and know what they want then we should be able to provide them with content and service without asking anything directly in return. In this way we engage with the audience on a pull rather then a push basis, this also helps position the brand in a positive way.
They also spoke about the poor state of the global economy and the importance of reducing expenditure, and tighten budgets for companies. They pushed that the perfect way to do this would be to increase relevant channels and decrease others. The relevant channel being the internet!
Further topics included how the search market changed incredibly in 2007, and is changing just as significantly in 2008. Google has cracked down on paid buying; some brands have been forced to reconsider their natural search strategy as they seek to remove themselves from link buying as quickly as possible. Which has resulted in many of these brands moving to explore social networks, to see if this can be used as a means to building traffic, links and brand.
Social media marketing was covered by a few papers, they focused on how some early adopters have benefited hugely while others have , heavy investments with light return and been left with empty communities. They also questioned if users of social networks, i.e. Facebook will accept adverts in there private Facebook profile space. 100,000 companies created profiles on Facebook with 24 hours of the network opening up Facebook advertising. Companies are ready, but are the users???
Usability – switching from a difficult to use website to an easy to use website has never been easier for internet users. No longer do we have to put up with slow, awkward websites. All we have to do is hit the back button and it takes us back to Google which, with its typically relevant search results, makes it simple to find an alternative website offering the same goods. Increasing the usability of any website will increase sales and conversion rates! It is a common sign that marketing managers are often “wowed” by fancy designs and that they forget that function always wins over form. So they pushed the message that “it may look good but if users can’t use it then they won’t!”
