What Impact is Web 2.0 Having on Marketing?

Web 2.0 has a big impact on marketing at Enterprises. Web 1.0 marketing teams were only focused on banner ads, email or direct marketing campaigns with no major tools to track audience behavior. Web 2.0 marketing now has to focus on 1) social media marketing, reach a new audience in all social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. This requires marketing teams to update their message/content regularly so they can reach the targeted audience. 2) New Web 2.0 software service tools like Eloqua, Marketo is really helping to measure audience behavior and nurture them.

Web 2.0 affects marketing in a number of ways. Here are just a couple

1. Marketing is now about open conversations vs closed messaging. Think blogs, twitter, other social media channels
2. Marketing is about measuring engagement, not simply clicks. As more of the buying related activity moves online, marketing needs to become smarter about understanding how online activity can measured to provide intelligence about levels and areas of interest

I blogged a couple of months ago on "What Marketing in a Web 2.0 World Looks Like"

http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/cloudtalk/2009/03/what_marketing_in_a_web_20_wor.php

Check it out

The impact is actually quite dramatic – a shift from the "old" model of producers and consumers to the new model of prosumers, to borrow author/friend Don Tapscott's word. Marketing executives at most firms are thinking of how they can engage their entire ecosystem of partners, users, suppliers, etc. to help not only "spread the word" but also "create the buzz". Many are struggling to figure out how to make that work – just look at the hordes of big companies on Twitter who don't really have much to say or offer. The "Web 2.0" world offers ways to dramatically improve marketing reach while simultaneously reducing cost, but the winners are those creative organizations that really tap into the heart of true value.

Web2.0 enables communication at a much more personal and down-to-earth level, and takes away the edge of big buck advertisement. This does not imply that money does not count – it still does – but content and adequacy count much more than before.

Social media is changing the way we receive our messages. Instead of information being passed down from a source, the consumer is creating it. First hand experiences are being recorded and become the source of what matters to the consumers. Messages not passed to us through this chain seem to be irrelevant. Even traditional advertising does not seem to have an impact unless it is discussed in social networks.

Apparently the recent boom of Twitter is showing us the new methods of receiving information. Twitter is the first social media that is centered exclusively on conversation. Other personal information or sharing is mostly irrelevant as only the conversation matters. Chatting has always been there – whether in blogs, social networks or information sharing – but it never hit you in the face the way that Twitter does.

Read more: http://www.hellriegel.net/2009/05/01/the-influence-of-social-media-on-advertising/#ixzz0FEaiM9Sr&B

As Mr. Hellriegel rightly points out, chatting has been around for a while – newsgroups and listservs were one of the first really compelling information dissemination mechanisms on the internet. But news groups and listservs were still pretty basic – it was web sites as the new face of information that made the internet ubiquitous.

Web 2.0 technologies are a next step that adds both new channels as well as providing a more personal and real time element. Web 2.0 also makes the user experience more gratifying - which to many users increases the value and makes it easier to tolerate direct marketing. That alone makes Web 2.0 have a large impact on marketing.

In my opinion, the most significant change that Web 2.0 technology has brought about to the marketing world is making marketing much more of a 2-way street than ever before. Traditionally, marketing has been about pushing information to potential consumers, telling them how great your products are, and why they should buy your product. Gathering information from them, especially pro-actively, has always been a challenge. Web 2.0 is the game changer that allows companies to pro-actively involve potential and existing consumers in marketing-related activities from product development to feedback to customer service. As an example, consider wikis - web sites that allow users to add, delete and edit content - where employees and consumers alike can answer frequently asked questions about each product. Many companies have also engaged in online community building through the use of sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Such online communities not only bring consumers closer to the company and its products but to one another and create the feeling of loyalty though an extended family. However, as with everything else in life, one Web 2.0 strategy should not be expected to fit all; companies must try different things to find out what's best for its environment (product, company, and consumer space).

This is a great post. The movement from traditional marketing to digital and then further on to web 2.0 related marketing has been quite phenomenal. Some firms though still are sitting on the fence and debating the merits while others like P&G, Nike, CNN have really embraced it. I guess some credit also has to go to the agencies which have started pushing this forward in a very active way but then again the larger Ad agencies (the Publicis and the Ogilvies of the world) have not been able to keep up giving space to the new mid-size guys like 42Street, FabriQate and such who have really put these big guys on the run. Much like on the tech scene the young bucks of Twitter and Facebook are challenging Microsoft and IBM...