Making Sense of Marketing 2.0
by Susan Payton

Overview

You will learn:

• What Marketing 2.0 is
• Why Marketing 2.0 is important to your business
• Examples of Marketing 2.0
• The seven characteristics of Marketing 2.0
• What Marketing 2.0 isn’t

Consumers are keenly aware of advertising. They TiVo their television programs so they can skip the commercials. They close down pop-up ads online. They ignore billboards, and they rarely use the Yellow Pages. So how are you, a business owner, supposed to get their attention?

The Internet.

Now, let me quantify that statement by saying there is a lot of noise on the Internet. While back in 1996, your website had a huge percentage of the existing web real estate, now you’re probably struggling to be heard above the din. There are over 162 million websites today. That’s a website for every 1.85 people in the United States (OK, that’s a weird statistic, but it proves a point: that’s a lot of websites!). It’s not enough to just have a website these days. You have to market it, and you have to get it to rise above the competition. How? With what I call Marketing 2.0.

Marketing 2.0 refers to the Internet and technology tools that make marketing interactive and easily adaptable.

Marketing 2.0 includes:


As a marketer, I am truly excited about Marketing 2.0, because it offers so many options. No matter the size of your company, what you sell, how big (or small) your budget is—there is something for you. And it’s constantly changing. As we’re seeing technology change, new opportunities in marketing are on the horizon.

Activity: Write down what you know about Marketing 2.0. Do you know what Twitter is? A blog? Write down questions that you have about Marketing 2.0.

There are seven primary characteristics of Marketing 2.0.

1.    It’s interactive. As consumers, we got tired of sitting on the couch watching commercials. In fact, we stopped watching them. With the advent of digital video recording, advertisers had to find other ways to engage us. Marketing 2.0 draws in the consumer through games, networking, surveys, and clicks. It’s a surefire way to make sure your audience is engaged.

Think beyond pop-up ads. Have you ever opened your soda bottle and seen something in the lid inviting you to enter a code on a website to see if you won a million dollars? That’s interactive. You don’t even notice it as advertising because it’s amusing. 

2.   Marketing 2.0 is flexible. This is one of my favorite traits of Marketing 2.0. If it doesn’t work, throw it out and try something else.  With “old school” marketing, you could be locked into an advertising contract for a year and not see any ROI. Now, with Internet advertising, blogs, and social media, results are instant. It becomes quickly apparent what methods work for you and which ones don’t.

You don’t have to waste your time on the ones that aren’t bringing you new sales.

I run Google AdWords campaigns from time to time, for my business and my e-books. Sometimes money is tight, and I can’t afford $2 clicks 100 times a day. I simply scale back when I need to.  I don’t have to call my account executive or pay a fee for breaching a contract. It’s beautiful. As the business owner, I am in control of my marketing for the first time!

3.   Marketing 2.0 is also democratic. Think back 20 years. If you saw a commercial or newspaper ad you liked, you might have told a friend.  But you couldn’t e-mail it to them so they could watch the commercial on their computers. Likewise, if you didn’t agree with the ethics a company presented in its advertising, there wasn’t much you could do about it. Now you have a voice about virtually anything. Blogs and social bookmarking tools are a great example of this democracy.  If something is worth watching or reading, people share it with others (and rank it on sites like Digg and Technorati). If a commercial incites people, they’ll share that with others too. The best marketing rises to the top.

On my Marketing Eggspert Blog, I frequently (well, occasionally) blast a company when they do bad or irresponsible marketing.  Recently Burger King put out a tasteless Whopper Virgin ad.  I wasn’t the only blogger who wrote about how the ad was done in poor taste. Thousands of people read these blog posts. And do you think they went to Burger King right after reading? I doubt it. So bloggers are having an impact on what people think and are letting companies know when they do wrong.

On the reverse of this, it is also possible to give a company good publicity when they do something right. People on Facebook and Twitter, as well as bloggers, are constantly sharing information on products and services they love. Because it’s not coming from an advertiser, people are more likely to listen. That is, in a nutshell, what word-of-mouth marketing is all about. 

4.   Marketing in today’s Internet landscape is viral. This goes along with the democratic feature. The better your marketing is, the more people will hear about it. Did you get an e-mail from a friend with the Elf Yourself campaign from OfficeMax during Christmas 2008?

It was clever and it worked. People did all the marketing legwork for OfficeMax by sharing the e-card with friends.

YouTube understands the beauty of viral marketing. While their hundreds of thousands of videos don’t make them money, getting people to their site to watch the videos does . . . because there are ads next to the videos. Clicking on the ads is what brings revenue to You-Tube. So share that Weird Al Yankovic video with ALL your friends!

5.   Marketing 2.0 is targeted. Technology has created the possibility to reach exactly your ideal customer. You can buy ads on sites they frequent, create pay-per-click advertisements that appear when people search for certain words, or buy e-mail lists of people who have interests aligned with your products. Television and radio, while they would like you to believe they’re targeted, create more of a shotgun effect (e.g., targeting everyone who likes to watch Ugly Betty.  My mother and I both like that show, and we really aren’t the same kind of consumer.).

Take a look at Sparkplugging.com, the site my blog is hosted on.  It addresses a very specific niche: people who work from home. If you are trying to sell your plumbing services, this might not be the site for you. But if you have virtual assisting services or entrepreneur books, this is your audience. Don’t pay more to advertise on a general site when there are so many that speak to your niche directly.

6.    Another one of my favorite features is Marketing 2.0’s affordability.
It does not cost a small fortune to market effectively! I love helping people understand this. There are so many amazing tools available for little or no cost that can boost your sales. It’s a matter of knowing what they are. 

Looking for a few free marketing tools? Try Facebook and Twitter, some press release distribution sites, commenting on blogs, creating blogs . . . and those are just a few. But don’t overlook the value of the time you spend on these sites. Even with that as a factor, it’s still cheaper than buying a billboard ad or phonebook ad!

7.    And finally, Marketing 2.0 is fun. Consumers don’t mind being marketed to when it’s entertaining and amusing. People flock to sites like YouTube to watch what are essentially commercials . . . but because they’re in the form of a skit or music video, they don’t mind the advertising aspect. It’s a powerful tool to make people want to see your advertising.

I heard a woman who works at IZEA, a social media marketing company, say, “I’m on Facebook and Twitter all day . . . I feel guilty.  But that’s my job!” And it’s true. We sometimes get so caught up in chatting on these social media sites (more about them in chapter 2) we forget we’re actually working. Well, sharing dumb photos with your sister on Facebook doesn’t really qualify as working, but chatting with people who may turn into clients is!

What Marketing 2.0 Isn’t

Now that you understand what Marketing 2.0 is, let’s cover what it isn’t.

•    Advertisers in control
•    Shotgun effect
•    Billboards, phone book ads, magazine ads
•    Expensive

Keep in mind Marketing 2.0 will change (and eventually become Marketing 3.0!). Don’t let this article be your single resource for the tools available. Spend some time online learning about other opportunities outside the scope of this article!