As online ad budgets are growing, marketing experts are putting their heads together to debate how best to exploit the potential of digital marketing to the full.
We took a look at the year gone by to round up the changes, challenges and opportunities for the marketing industry and to get an idea of what 2010 might bring.
In 2009, the industry saw a rapid increase in companies adapting social networking websites to their marketing strategies. Now, after facebooking and tweeting, the next big thing on everyone’s lips is mobile advertising. It still remains a fairly untouched market even though many have predicted that the ‘year of the mobile’ is just around the corner.
Creative pressure
Mobile or not, the marketing industry is constantly changing.
Alex Gisbert, the director of Expedia, explained in a roundtable discussion orchestrated by Marketing Week and Google, that a fundamental shift from “push” to “pull” can be seen in marketing strategies.
He said: “I think old-style marketing is all about pushing messages into consumers’ faces. Pull marketing is a fundamental shift, both culturally and in the mindset of the marketer. We think that if you go out with a push on a boring platform, people just don’t want to see it. They want to come looking, and we have to make sure they find us first.”
The pressure of being on top of the game, mastering the technologies and coming up with new ways of engaging the audience is always present.
Marc Sands, the Guardian’s marketing director, pointed out that in the digital era, there is even more need to be creative.
He said: “You have to get people engaged for the first time. You need to create that salience and moment so when a consumer thinks of the brand they can find it instantly using search.”
Conversation, not a speech
With the pressure also comes benefits. The word ‘engaging’ pops up time and again in the discussion and Will King, the creator of cult shaving brand ‘King of Shaves’, is impressed by the depth of engagement that is now possible.
He said: “For marketing, it’s an amazing time to be working with digital media and coming up with new ways to engage. Our online John Terry game has been a huge boost for the brand, with over 65,000 plays a day. It’s a conversation, not a speech, and is fantastically aligned with other marketing to make it flow. The amount of engagement you can have with consumers is mind-blowing.”
He is not, however, convinced that in terms of fully understanding the new direction the industry is taking, there are still lessons to be learned.
“A completely different kind of marketing mindset is required. It should be a great conversation like on TV – not interrogative and discursive. That’s the future and that’s why I think the 21st century marketer has not been born yet.”
Andrew Harrison, Carphone’s chief executive, added: “The problem is lazy thinking, which takes all digital communications, or a subset of them such as social networking, as all one-and-the-same. The reality is they are fundamentally different in how you react to each one and engage with them. You will still need the creative intuitive, but there needs to be a balance.”
Behind the curve
The core message of these marketing experts seems to be that marketing in the 21st century needs to be done with an overall understanding of the digital world rather than as a discrete add-on to existing marketing strategies.
Marc Sands pointed out that the discussion should be about marketing in the digital world, not digital marketing.
He said: “As an industry we are slightly behind the curve, and the people who help us along the way are way behind the curve – clients are light-years ahead of their partners in thinking and it’s devastating for them. Businesses like the music industry have had to reshape themselves significantly to keep up with culture.”
For digital marketing, the next big thing behind that curve might be the long awaited mobile advertising which has remained a tiny market even though there are more mobile phones than PCs in the world.
But now, everything seems to be ready; smartphones becoming common goods and social media applications being used increasingly via mobile phones. Google has added to the hype with its multimillion pound deal to buy mobile ad network AdMob.
The forecasts for mobile advertising are far from modest. According to an article by Reuters, mobile advertising is predicted to reach $28.8 billion within 5 years, growing at an annual average of 45 percent.
Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management, said in The Independent:
“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time.”
Waiting for the mobile
Despite the optimistic predictions, mobile advertising has still got a few obstacles to overcome before reaching its full potential.
In an article published by AdWeek, mobile advertising is still argued to be in its very infancy and it’s claimed that smartphones are not yet as wide-spread as generally believed.
The article suggests that despite the fancy apps and ads available to smartphones, the best way to run mobile advertising campaigns is via old fashioned text messages.
Alistair Goodman, CEO of mobile ad tech provider Placecast said: “You’ve got to be able to run on all phones, not just on smartphones. Eventually everyone will have one. Today that isn’t the case.”
The mobile web is compared to the internet in its early days – a small market without standardised methods and simple ways to run and measure campaigns.
The absence of a simple transaction option is believed to be holding the platform down.
Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, said: “When mobile phones become a payment option, it will be the year of mobile. Until that happens, it’ll be another display medium.”
Case studies – How to do it?
We had a look at some of the last year’s successes in digital marketing. What did they do to stand out and engage the audience? And how was social media used successfully?
Read the case studies here: What’s next for digital marketing – How to do it?
Tags: Digital, digital marketing, mobile, social media
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