A New Marketplace

By Kyle McCabe | April 6, 2010

Last week I wrote about OTA Sessions, which I attended the week before, and gave some overall thoughts about the experience. For the next couple of posts I will attempt to dive a little deeper and find out what it all means for you and I.

Most of the ideas discussed by the event speakers can be boiled down to one thing: changes. Changes in the marketplace and marketing; changes in the “consumer,” and the “user”; changes in the way we interact as people, and changes in the way we do business because of it; changes in our thinking and our actual physiology.

So how exactly has the marketplace changed? Here’s what some of our speakers had to say about the current state of things, with a little commentary thrown in:

Mich Joel:

• 40% of TV watchers are also… sleeping
  So on top of people watching TV shows online and using DVR, 40% of people actually “watching” a TV aren’t even seeing your ads. Because they’re sleeping. Hey, not to dismiss TV spots altogether, but we can all see that people’s habits concerning home entertainment are changing, right? Other studies show people also surf the internet while watching TV, and for that matter I watch ALL my TV on the internet.

• There are 1.8B people online
  That’s about 20% of the world population with close to 300 million in North America. Most of the rest are in Asia and Europe, predictably, but I’m sure we can agree this internet thing isn’t a fad (does anyone still think this?). Short of global catastrophe, the internet isn’t going anywhere.

• 81% of holiday shoppers read product user reviews online
  People aren’t looking to you to find out about your products anymore, they’re looking to each other. While there is still some debate about whether people really trust each other that much, it’s pretty clear they trust advertising less than word-of-mouth. Have you seen any online product and service reviews about YOU?

• 20% of DAILY searches on Google have never been entered before
  This one boggles the mind. A full fifth of searches entered every day are unique?! Well I suppose it doesn’t help that probably half of all searches are for *ahem* adult content. You’re right, probably more than that.

• Online, WE create our own user experience
  By choosing and sometimes even creating the content viewed, people are experiencing something custom-tailored for them. This isn’t sitting on the couch staring numbly at the screen. It’s interactive and user-controlled. You may not be burning any more calories than watching TV, but at least your mind is engaged. So does this more interactive, engaging activity make people pay closer attention to ads, or ignore them more easily?

• Brand control hasn’t shifted, but people who experience your brand now enjoy an amplified voice
  While you still control your brand, to a degree, people now have a voice. They can be heard all over the web, and as the 3rd bullet points out, they listen to each other. Collectively, they can make or break your brand. And don’t forget Google’s influence on the brand experience; have you checked the search results for your particular product or service lately?

Chris Brogan:

• We don’t have to wait for “they” anymore. WE are “they”
  Chris related an anecdote (this is all paraphrased) about a woman who commented on one of his fundraising efforts saying she wished “they” would do such fundraising in her locale. He responded, “hey congratulations: YOU are they. Sign up here, put the widget on your website and start raising money.” The point is there are a lot of things available to the individual and small business that we’ve never had access to before. The internet helps to level the field.

• We can now listen at the point of need, and directly fulfill that need
  There are plenty of “listening” tools out there to help you monitor social media, blogs, forums and the rest of the web to find people in need of your particular product or service. You now have a DIRECT line to the customer.

• “Community Manager” is one of the most frequently filled position right now on Monster.com
  This is one of those things you can take or leave, but I think it’s very interesting some of the new positions that are arising from these changes we’re seeing. Community manager? I thought they only existed in online gaming.

Spike Jones:

• 90% of word-of-mouth happens offline
  For all our technology we still do most of our communicating in person. I’m not sure if “offline” includes the telephone, but either way 90% of our talk about products and services happens without the use of the internet. Don’t misunderstand it, though: much of the subject matter we talk about is found online–and some is available only online, in fact–but actual discussion of that happen mostly offline. (I’ll talk more about what Spike Jones had to say in the next post.)

Conclusions?

There’s a lot to consider there. This really is a new marketplace, but we’re still in the middle of that shift.

We’ve heard people announce the death of print and traditional advertising, and plenty more have denied it. I don’t think this debate is relevant. From the very first printing press, this technology has been constantly changing. One thing has stayed constant from the very beginning: human interaction. In fact, if you really think about it, social networking is far older than mass media.

We should be able to agree that humans have always been fundamentally social. We are drawn to each other and impelled to communicate and belong to social groups; something greater than ourselves.

The difference now is the marketplace is shifting to media through which human interaction is enabled—necessary, in fact—rather than muffled or disabled.

I’ve said it before: whether you like it or not, your business already has a presence in this marketplace. Even if you don’t have a website yet, there are still business directories, review websites, and conversations in social media that may involve your brand. Do you know what they’re saying?

Next post I’ll get into what the speakers at the OTA Sessions had to say about adapting to enter and succeed in this new marketplace. You may want to subscribe to get future posts automatically in your feed reader or e-mail.

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Photo courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives

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