What is the Web 2.0 Impact on Marketing Today?

A few weeks ago, the ebizQ Forum posed an interesting question for open comment - what impact is Web 2.0 having on marketing? I responded with a brief comment but it was such a great question that I want to extend the discussion on this blog post.

In the past five years, Web 2.0 has radically changed how we view, interact and think about leveraging the Internet...and it has profoundly changed marketing. Here are just a few ways that marketing has been impacted by Web 2.0 -

1. Open Conversations versus Closed Messaging.

Marketing used to be all about crafting a message, shaping it and directing it to a target audience. It was closed, controlled and transactional. From the corporation's perspective it was "we talked, you listened". It was one to many (one vendor -> many prospects). It was uni-directional (no talking back!).

But that's not the case anymore. Marketers are no longer in control and you can blame it on the rise of social media - blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc... Web 2.0 took the power of messaging from the vendor and put it in the hands of the consumer - think of it as "Power to the People"! Conversations about a company's brand, product and services are conducted all the time, often without participation of the company. It's bi-directional and conversational. It's about many-to-many communications - between customers, partners, competitors and company itself.

And you can forget about trying to control the message. The only choice marketers have is whether to participate in the conversation or not.

2. The Hidden Buying Process

Vendors often think about the "sales process" - how do we sell to our customers. What's often overlooked is the "buying process" - how do customers prefer to buy, what are their buying behaviors. Web 2.0 has changed the way most buying occurs. It used to be that in a B2B sale, the sales person would manage the sales process, offering insights on the product, handling objections as they arise and all the time, observing subtleties like the prospect's body language in the meeting. Today, most of that interaction is no longer in play. Buyers do most of the research online - they download brochures from the corporate website, they visit blogs, they may even tweet to find out more about what others think. By the time the aforementioned salesperson gets to the prospect, most of the decision making process has been conducted. All the prospect is interested in, should they even venture to speak to the vendor is to conduct the negotiation.

Web 2.0 is at the heart of this change and the job of the smart marketer is to figure out how to participate in that hidden buying cycle. In short - they have to be able to read the "Digital Body Language". Innovative marketers realize this and leverage tools to do so because failing to participate early and often in the buying cycle will ultimately cripple the selling process.

3. Marketing to Micro-Markets

One of the effects of the Web 2.0 model is the ability to sell to micro-markets. Think of this as the Long Tail Effect - when production and distribution costs become negligible, the opportunity to provide goods and services to micro-markets increase.

This raises the need to be able to market to these micro-segments. If you're a Seth Godin fan, you might think of these micro markets in terms of tribes. Regardless, the need to have the right conversation with the right person at the right time is imperative. That's the definition of true personalization. Effective marketers, especially in the B2C segment will have to figure this out or lose out on great opportunities.

What else have I left out? What other big changes is Web 2.0 bringing to the world of marketing?