We are entering a time in the digital landscape when most product information is already known and readily available to all potential consumers. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other peer-to-peer communication networks have created dynamic communities of interest which inform customers about product options and influence their purchasing decisions.  The content that is created through these communities, the people that publish into them and the places where these interchanges occur are all now connected.

Our panel brings together local digital thought leaders to discuss the conversations and innovations that are impacting consumer buying behavior and brand engagement.

Join our host Holly Brown, Chief Innovation Officer, R2integrated as she welcomes:

Event Moderator: Tricia Duryee, eMoney columnist, Allthingsd.com

Event Participants: James Lively, COO DIY Media, Scott Blanksteen, CEO AppStoreHQ, and Kathy Savitt, CEO Lockerz, and Jordan Williams, Digital Engagement Lead, REI.

Where: Founder’s Co-op, South Lake Union. 511 Boren Ave N. , Seattle

When: Thursday, April 28, 2011 The Dbar opens at 5:30 and the “official” conversation starts at 6:30.

RSVP: http://dbar.eventbrite.com/
Tweet

Thank you to our sponsors: The Celtic Swell Irish Pub, Hughes Media Law Group, and Founders’ Co-op.

Andy Maddocks has joined r2i as President of its newly launched Boston office. Andy comes to us after providing over five years of marketing and technology leadership at In Touch, an original content producer of television, radio, podcasting, Web, and print materials for over 30 years.

While at Atlanta-based In Touch, an organization listed by Forbes magazine as one of America’s 200 best managed charitable organizations, Andy led the team responsible for the creation and execution of the In Touch content and communication strategy for donor development programs and activities. In his role as the executive in charge of new product development strategy, Maddocks worked closely with in-house television producers, Web and social media content developers, product developers, direct marketing strategists, creative staff, and agencies to help In Touch better engage with its growing audience of over 10 million households.

Earlier in his professional life, Andy served as a marketing and business leader at other well-known organizations including the Boston-area US headquarters of Cognos/IBM and Connecticut-headquartered United Technologies. At Cognos/IBM, Andy led Strategic e-Marketing for business development and expansion as well as leading the initiative to completely re-architect the company’s main Web site as well as its CRM. During his nearly decade-long tenure at high tech businesses within United Technologies Andy led advanced software and hardware product development, technology licensing initiatives, investment and acquisition teams, and many strategic business development initiatives.

Additionally, we’re welcoming Wayne Chen, who joins the team in Baltimore as our VP of Mobile Strategy. Wayne is an accomplished strategic mobile and project manager with several years of experience in managing web and mobile applications. Wayne is versed in Drupal, Joomla, PHP5, DotNet, DDN, Ajax, JQuery, JavaScript, Java, L.A.M.P, MySql, and SQLServer.

Wayne comes to us from Remote Tiger, a professional multi-national web and mobile development corporation. As the former business engagement manager, Wayne oversaw the company’s mobile and web divisions including the development of several popular and private enterprise apps such as 50 States, Flight Plan, Lotto, Hawaii Savvy, and Diagnostic Labs. His mobile expertise includes primary native application kits such as iOS and Android.

Brands depended on a publisher’s ability to reach those communities and paid to have their content delivered to those groups. The role of the brand was passive and non-participatory.

Enter the Internet age, where the roles and appearances of publishers and brands are not so distinct. The online world is fragmented. Internet search technology has not only empowered consumers to seek data and opinions from multiple sources, but also to share and voice their own. Instead of being served or organized by publishers, communities of interest are self-organizing, appearing all over the Internet on social networks, blogs, discussion boards, et al.

For this reason, brands no longer need to rely on publishers as the primary communication conduit to communities. Brands are now developing their own Web content and experience-rich places where they have direct access to and can control interaction with consumers. The Internet as a research and buying engine—and changes in consumer behavior—has turned brands into publishers.

Bearing in mind the need for a complete and well-designed strategy, there are a few simple actions brands can take to help start this transition.  

First, brands need a way to publish. Brands should identify and establish platforms for the delivery of community-oriented content. This would include a CMS and other tools that can simplify regular content updates and customer interaction as well as other community-centric functions such as blogs, discussions, wikis, membership, etc. Third-party networks must also utilized Facebook and Twitter are the most familiar examples of existing social platforms with little barrier to entry that brands can leverage to publish their message.

Once the platforms have been established, brands must fill them with engaging content that focuses on the interest of the community, not solely on brand products or services. Editorial objectivity is often the toughest new challenge for brands as publishers. The content must be useful and unbiased to avoid appearing promotional and self-serving, while still conveying, or relating to, the brand values.  

Next, brands must connect with communities by facilitating dialogue and sharing within them. For instance, discussion forums should be places where people may share freely, leave readable comments, view comments from others, and exchange information. Brands must also be active participants, not merely moderators. They should respond quickly to issues and requests, demonstrating to the individuals and the community at large that they are responsive and involved.

Lastly, brands must understand what is happening in their community and responding accordingly. By doing so, brands are able to make adjustments to their offerings and image that will keep the community involved, while simultaneously attracting new members.

Online social spaces are fascinating market research tools because they have taken the old, and very expensive focus group model, and made it super efficient.  Inside of social spaces we can hear real conversations about our companies products and services and our competitors.  We can hear conversations about trends in our industry, what people care about, and what they don’t.  Because all of this information is on the computer it is recorded and stored for later consumption.  Using search engines like Google helps uncover these conversations many of which happen hours or weeks before but all very valuable.

As new technologies are created to aggregate the collective statements of our markets we start to get an fascinating picture of who our customer is and what they want from us.  These technologies and monitoring tools do the hard part for us.  But that is just the beginning.  Many social communities can be tapped by marketers to increase the level of engagement with our audience.   Find the opinion leaders and ask them to evaluate your next product.  Ask community members to assist with your next idea or the next name for a new service you are putting together.  We can now get proactive and tap this crowd wisdom on a one on one, or one to many basis.

However, we need to be careful.  Like any good market research exercise the sample size is important.  Listening to a small sample could cause your results to be less accurate.  The lesson here is to apply standard market research best practices to this new medium to achieve the best results.

It was refreshing to hear that as a marketer I was able to relate to the individual that controlled the budgets for our campaigns. So it sparked a question, what are marketing departments talking about when they pitch for the budgets? As we all know general marketing spending is down the last couple of years. The economy is partially a factor, but I also think that people are still speculating on the notion of “build it and they will come”. Recent research indicates that Social Networks which were originally conceived to be an inexpensive marketing tool are actually only successful when serious dollars are allocated to it. Those dollars are in the form of personnel, promotion, research, content creation, and strategy.  Using Social Networks for marketing should be treated no differently than any other campaign that you would launch.

Back to the original thought, what are marketing people saying about leads and conversions? With this particular client, a recruiting agency, we had the fortunate opportunity to be able to track and ultimate hiring of every individual to a specific lead source. We were then able to track the total number of leads back to dollars allocated/actual dollars spent. So I was able to discuss marketing successes and failures as it relates to pure numbers, which for the CFO and ultimately the board was refreshing and enlightening.

If you have a conversation with me, you will soon find that I love the numbers of marketing; page views, conversions rates, click thru rates, unique visitors, etc… I just get giddy. Mainly because it is a tangible item, which in marketing can be difficult. So I am challenging the marketing departments and the specialist and anyone that launches a campaign…. Know the numbers, understand the implications, go back and research and find out what happened and how you can do it better next time, and then present that to a CFO and see if he/she gets it. I guarantee that if they get it, the money for your next successful campaign will be much easier to ask for. If you can’t track those numbers, work with your tech and sales team to make sure that you figure out how to track it. Content may be king on the web, but numbers win in the board room.

As always – open to discuss this post or how we can help you with your next successful campaign.

When I started with R2i over three years ago, I quickly discovered that marketing and technology intertwine and that you really can’t have it any other way. This was a new idea for me, but it made perfect sense and still does.

Marketers need to work closely and effectively with their counterparts who are ultimately responsible for managing online business technology. Why? Because technology is an integral part of all your online initiatives.  The more you understand the technology, the more you are able to work in unison with your IT department… help each other spark ideas and assure that all of your projects will run smoothly. The key here is building cohesion.  Developers tend to be introverted and don’t focus as much on the target verticals and brand strategies. Marketers understand the pulse of the business world and can help craft a more robust technical strategy by keeping closer relationships with the teams which ultimately build the products and services they will provide.

Marketers can devise killer ideas, but if it’s not possible to build out, what does it matter?  Programmers can build out an amazing application, but if marketing isn’t involved to push it out and get people using it, what’s the point?

I like to think of technology as “the marketing enabler.” The technology is what makes it possible to do 95% of marketing initiatives. Whether it’s content distribution, launching a marketing campaign or measuring the success of those campaigns, technology is in the driver’s seat a good portion of the time (or at least giving me directions from the back seat). Technology allows us to create online initiatives that take R2i into new markets and serve our audience in new and innovative ways. Thinking of the technology as the enabler provides a better sense of the constraints and possibilities of implementing marketing ideas.

The technology team has to now expand their job description to “think tech”, but keeping marketing in mind. And marketing must continue to be innovative, not only with strategies but with the technologies used to implement them. With technology and marketing co-mingling, the dance will always be in full swing.