The Changing Marketplace

Last week, while researching competitors of a client of mine, I found a funky fresh new approach to a business model that has been accepted, I imagine, since the advent of the internet. Two things became clear:

• I used ‘funky fresh’ un-ironically, showing that I may have reached the event horizon of my diminishing youth and am on the descent into middle age.
• There are going to be some incredible developments in the business world in the very near future that uses the internet in increasingly innovative ways.

Now, because it is my client’s competitor, I can’t give you the name of this website, sorry. You’ll just have to believe me when I say that it is a cool concept extremely well executed. And it utilises current online technology, Facebook in particular.

Funnily enough, there is someone high up in Google that believes the same thing (click here)…

If you can’t watch the link because an hour might be that bit too long, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt theorises that startup companies will leverage existing technology and drastically alter whole industries with innovation that literally cannot be imagined at present. The sharing of knowledge of people worldwide is guaranteed to bring innovation beyond imagination.

You may be scoffing, thinking that you already use Facebook as part of your online marketing strategy. Some of you are using Google Plus, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, amongst many others. And so you should, the stats show that someone will ‘touch’ your brand something like eleven times before making a purchase. The more online presence you have, the better prepared you are when it comes to dealing with the future.  These are known knowns when it comes to internet marketing.

Then there are the known unknowns; we see that certain companies are using the internet to market in certain ways and wonder how they’re doing it. Many of you wondered how your competitor managed to be on all those pages when you surf the internet, thinking they must have a massive budget until you learn that they have just employed a Remarketing campaign in their AdWords account. I’m sure there are things on the net that even now still puzzle even some of the savviest of you out there.

As we know, the online world is constantly changing and it is affecting the offline world in profound ways, too. I pulled some cash out the other day for the first time in months and completely forgot it was in my wallet because my card is my default method of purchase. Certain websites require little else other than logging in with your Facebook to register for services/ product purchases. Uber uses Google Maps to pinpoint location.

The unknown unknowns will come from entrepreneurs who have known nothing else but a world with the internet and its features. And when they land in our respective industries, we have to be prepared to adapt, change, and grow.

‘The most dangerous phrase in the English language is “we’ve always done it this way.”’ – Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.

I’m going to level with you, one of my biggest frustrations when dealing with clients is when there is a clear need for change and yet the suggestion, even the advice, is met with stubborn resistance. It still amazes me when someone says, “But it was working fine two years ago”. Two years ago online is like comparing telemarketing in the 90s and door to door sales in the 20s. The tactics are wildly different; the customers more aware, even the laws and policies governing the processes have changed. They’re completely different beasts.

If we can see a competitor is succeeding, we need to do our best to find out why. In the past, it might have been a simple case of increasing the position of your ads on AdWords, bidding a little more on keywords in order to appear in a position that is more likely to convert. It may have been that the ad text needed changing, that the market had lost interest in claims of efficacy or origin, that they were more interested in price, free shipping, discounts, or vice versa. Now we must look deeper, go through the competitor website buy process, peruse their social media, compare organic ranking, and as offered above, if they are boldly walking a new ‘funky fresh’ path that would appeal to a generation raised on connection to the wider world that is unprecedented in history, find what it is that appeals and target it.

By maintaining our current online presence and keeping our ear to the fibre optic cable (it doesn’t have the same ring to it as ‘street’, but I’m being literal), we will be prepared for when the unknown unknowns become known unknowns. Then it is only two steps to being in front.