MBA Geek

Excellent article on WSJ about marketing in a Web 2.0 World. It’s a distillation of conversations the researchers had with a number of key people involved in leveraging the new social tools available on the Web. Here’s what they recommend:

• Don’t just talk at consumers - Work with them through the marketing process – The new paradigm is all about engagement. The audience isn’t passive any more, involve them in your process, from idea generation all the way to product feedback.
• Give consumers a reason to participate – Motivate consumers, an incentive (not necessarily monetary can go a long way). And make sure there are no barriers to their participation, things like a toll free where they can speak to someone can go a long way
• Listen to, and join, the conversation outside your site – Keep an ear open for conversations around the Web, and participate wherever word springs up about your company.
• Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell – Don’t forget, you’re trying to build a relationship here. Forget short-term wins and you can build a long-lasting loyalty.
• Don’t control, let it go – This is a hard one for most executives. Solicit feedback wherever you can. Negative comments can help you grow and improve even though your initial reaction may be purge.
• Find a ‘marketing technopologist.’ – That’s a person who brings together strengths in marketing, technology and social interaction. These people are worth their weight in gold.
• Embrace experimentation – New ideas are generated all the time; some die some flourish. You need to participate wherever you can to be part of this growing ecosystem and reap the rewards.

There’s some great stuff in there, some of which isn’t immediately intuive. The article has a number of cases and real-life examples, so head off and read the full article

A topic my friend Leo and I often talk about is how online businesses compare to bricks and mortar ones. Here is some insight he had about how you can start to compare the two:

In hard times people get a little bit more creative about making money. As there is less money to go around one wants to insure that what one has can go a long way. One might be tempted to visit markets and a sell some products or maybe open an online shop. Online businesses or websites tend to be seen as a cheap option. no rent, no expensive layout costs, staff recruitment cost. Is that so?

It is common misconception that online stores are cheap and easy. It can be best be summoned up by you get what you pay/put in. For example Ebay provides excellent e-commerce facilities. The only down side with it is the cost. All our clients that use that service are trying unsuccessfully to get away from it. They are tired of Ebay taking their percentage. Unfortunately building up customer trust on there own website is proving difficult. But that need not be the case with  the right planning and investment.

This is where the shop comparison comes in. If you would spend ten thousand pounds setting up out high street retail shop, you will need to spend at least that on an internet retail business to make it successful. There are few shortcuts that really work. If you want to create a successful business you will need to either spend the money to employ somebody to set it up for you in the way that create positive sales, or you will have to spend the time yourself. If you thing that just buying a domain name and putting some e-commerce software purchased for a couple of hundred bucks is going to create an online business, I have news for you. It ain’t going to happen. Pity you may say, but the good news is that with the right tick sheet you can solve many of the problems.

Before you’ll begin you may want to think about the following:

• Customer registration and account management
• News letter signup
• Automatic email confirmation
• Search feature
• Secure user login
• User behaviour statistics
• Varied Payment options
• Email to a friend

Or maybe not, How about this:

1. Target Audience – Who is your website directed at? Other businesses, older people, all age groups? It is important to understand who you are talking to and what goals you have for the site.
2. Number of Pages – Do you know the number and types of pages and how they relate to each other? You don’t need to know the exact details but try and think about what types of pages you should have.
3. Content – This means the text inside the pages and it is the most important part of the website. The rest of the site builds what we call in the industry rapport, but the contents are what sell your product or services. In fact if your site looked horrible but had great content it could still be successful, but not the other way around.
4. Design – Do you know what colors you would like or the type of graphic contents? Do you have logos ready to be used? Your site can be graphic heavy as we say or it can be clean and sparse. It is your choice and is very much a personal decision. If you don’t know what you want, you can surf the internet and find some sites you like.
5. Images – Do you have all the pictures for the site and are they in a digital format?
6. Forms – These pages are the ones that collect information from your visitors and then send you this information as an email. You can contact us to discuss your options. We will guide you through the process, one step at a time.

There some interesting information there, however I would tend to take it a step further. The key to making a business work, regardless of whether it’s online or offline, is a successful business case. Without the correct strategy in place you’re doomed to failure, regardless of how complete your online offering will be. Focusing on the technology is the wrong place to start; first analyse what demand exist for your services, then decide what effort and resources you want to invest in it.

Interesting post today on Techcrunch about the current debate around copyright law and Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. I’m not going to enter into the merits of whether Arlington is right or wrong, but instead focus on that last paragraph of the post:

…it’s time for copyright holders to rethink their business models. The winners won’t be the companies that win or lose billion dollar lawsuits. It’ll be the companies that throw out everything that’s come before, and build new businesses around the natural behavior of people. Remove friction and win.

This message has been bandied around for some time now, and today is truer that ever. Business who focus on consolidating their position are bound to be overtaken by others who are innovating and pushing the envelope.

An interesting analogy can be drawn with the movie rental market. 10 years ago, the corner shop was king. If you wanted to outdo the competition, you built larger shops, opened new geographical locations or stocked your shops with more and better movies. Today, this strategy doesn’t work because the environment the companies operate in has changed. The rental market has moved to more convenient models, whether it’s postal services or Internet delivery, the old method is dust. Adding floorspace to your retail outlets isn’t going to matter one bit, neither is opening more stores. The world changes, embrace it and look for new opportunities.