Return on Intention

Greetings people of earth, i have a message from the future. Internet Advertising enjoys only 7% of the total advertising spending each year. Thats seems to be a pretty small number, but the tides are shifting. Each year the transfer of ad spending from traditional media (tv, radio, print) are being shifted to the web. It has been shown that overall this is good move, provided you do it right.

The internet, as we have found, does not work as a traditional marketing tool. The keyword here is traditional. We tried banner ads and pop-ups when the web was born, and found quickly that they didn’t produce as we expected. This happened for three reasons.

1.) Banner ads and pop-ups we’re implemented as if the web we’re TV and the ads worked like 30 second spots. Interruption techniques don’t work well on the internet because that is not how the internet works. The internet works by people looking for what they want, not by getting thing you don’t.

2.) we missed our greatest successes because we didn’t see them. The internet strategies we employed were measured by the way we knew how to measure, unfortunately, it didn’t work. Then we got stuck on eyeballs (again, TV Broadcast thinking). When you measure nothing but click-throughs and page view, it easy to forget the intention and start making seemingly justified decision that don’t have much effect on branding or sales, but just attracts people. This can quickly distort your ideas of good internet marketing. Its like running a casino on head counts. “If we have a higher head count, we must be making more money”…no…it just means you have more people, and if you have a casino full of less than valuable customers, your valuable customer cant find a place a sit. Many groups forgot that the purpose was to make the company successful using the internet, not making the website popular.

3.) People love the internet because its not a good place for ads. Marketing on the internet can be very successful, as long as your don’t advertise. The internet was build and doesn’t work according to its inhabitants as an ad platform. Not the way we think traditionally. Frankly, ad just don’t work on the internet. Branding, however, can. People are on the internet to connect, to see what they want and overall, on their terms. If you want to connect with them, and live in their space according to their definition of your place there, you can have a powerful impact.

Marketing on the internet it most successful when you learn to live with your customers, not yell at them. They want you to be that cool friend they know and most of their friends have heard of, that has no trace of arrogance despite their popularity. “Yea, me and pepsi hung out today, it was cool”.

Look at your strategy to find where to fit in with your customers, and if you need help, ask your customers, they would love to talk to you. If you don’t, i would stay away from the internet, otherwise you might be in for a rude awakening at 2:00 am from gort.

Who doesn’t love broadband? Its great, its faster than dial up and always on…except when its not. In a freak accident my internet connection went down mid-day tuesday, right in the middle of a conversation with Bryper. My connection was not restored until thursday morning. Because of this is was late to the party for registering as a participant in the second life crayon launch. I was put on the waiting list. Fortunatly, as it happens, there was room at the party i did get to attend, at least for the first 45 minutes until i had to run.

It was pretty neat. This company is definately differnet. They launched there company in second life, not at a real world press conference. The member of the company are from all over the world and heavy-weights in social medai and new marketing to boot. The world is changing, and this company promises to offer solutions in that changing world by offering a new way of doing business. I’ll think they’ll do well, and they have my congratulations.

What is intreging to me is how they will run the company. This group has vowed to break all the rules, so how will they manage their business, and how will their business model run? As time goes on we will see, but until then, good luck guys, and congrats.

Its been an interesting trip. I have to say that the entire trip was worth going to. The conference was great. Toronto was great. My hotel, was not great, but I wasn’t there much and was asleep when I was, so I guess I will survive. Before my next trip I’ll have to remember to check out Shel’s travel blog to find out where to stay.

In case you were not able to joins us, the conference was held in a nightclub. No hotel conference rooms for this shindig. The place was called the Guvernment and Kool Haus. Looking at http://www.theguvernment.com for the venue before leaving, I got these notions of how cool the conference was going to be. After spending two days there; however, the choice in location really only gave us one advantage over using a hotel conference room, and that was the sound system. We had no problem hearing the speakers.

Speaking of speakers, here is a tip to all you presenters out there…DON’T READ YOUR PRESENTAION!!! I have no problem with notes, but reading a presentation word for word is very frustrating to watch. Reading a presentation creates the impression that the speaker does not have a good knowledge of their chosen topic. All the presenters had valuable information to share, but let me just say this: If you ever have the opportunity to see any of the following people talk, don’t miss the opportunity: CC Chapman, David Weinberger, Brian Eisenberg, Mitch Joel or Joseph Jaffe. These guys all share the ability to speak well and engage an audience.

Here’s a tip to make you popular and build name recognition at a conference, Only go to conferences very far away from where you live, preferably in another country. I went to the Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto Ontario Canada from my home in Rio Rancho New Mexico USA. I heard about the conference on Six Pixels of Separation a little while back, and after reading the list of keynote speakers from the Canadian Marketing Associations website made arrangements to go. How could you not go and see the group previously above. I contacted Mitch, CC, and Joseph through email and skype to let them now I was coming, and the word spread. It was pretty strange; I’m not a really important person by any means. I haven’t cured cancer or ended poverty, but was greeted at the conference as “Oh, you’re the guy that came up from New Mexico!” This was also usually followed with “Where is New Mexico, anyway?” It was cool being a novelty for the day or two because it allowed me to talk to a lot of people that probably wouldn’t have sought me out otherwise.

A few of the committee members from the Canadian Marketing Association blogged about the conference, from the conference and posted it at http://www.canadianmarketingblog.com/. This is a good collection of what was said by the presenters. Check it out and make sure to come next year.

Well, here it is, Wednesday night as I sit in my hotel room in Toronto awaiting dinner. Tomorow is the start of the Canadian Marketing Associations Digital Marketing Conference. Needless to say I’m pretty excited. One reason is that the speakers at the conference are an increadible mix of new media masters. These speakers include CC Chapman, Mitch Joel, Joseph Jaffe, Brian Eisenberg and more. To make the experience more exciting, I will be joining a few of them for dinner tonight. Imagine, little old me getting to meet with such superstars. The interesting thing is this: if this was any other industry, would it be possible for a small marketing group start-up guy to meet with some of the titans of the industry? Not likely. Hows that for proving the rules are changing. Of course, maybe I’m putting to much into this, everyone has a breaking point, and I just kept on e-mailing all the keynotes until they broke down