The New Marketing Imperative: Conversations
I’m here at the American Business Media conference, an annual gathering of the major B2B business publishers from around the world. The talk at all the sessions and the cocktail hours centers on what’s happening to the traditional publishing business and what can be done to regain momentum. Mortgage crisis, higher prices and consumer uncertainty has publishers scrambling for answers as advertising revenues drop and readership wanes.
Yet in the midst of all this, the attendees here continue to be baffled by the continued, unabashed growth of everything digital. Talk of blogs, community, rich media, social networking, SEO and analytics are everywhere but traditional publishers who have been slow to react wonder if this is a bad dream and will all just go away or if it’s already to late to jump into the pool. One of those publishers, David Calhoun, CEO of Nielson warns that “this time you’re not going to be able to budget your way to success” and goes on to say “that this is a new world where the customers and readers are totally in control and are making choices minute by minute”.
Edward Abrams, Vice President of Marketing for IBM followed by agreeing that IBM has come to the say conclusion. That first, the customer is in control. Second, that customers and the marketplace are having a conversation. And third, that companies like IBM must participate in that conversation or be left behind.
Of course, the enabling source of these conversations is the digital world where every customer has a voice and information is transmitted and accessed instantly on a worldwide basis. Conversation cannot be controlled but they can be invaluable in learning about what customers, readers or members think about your company’s products and services and then moving quickly to satisfy needs. In this way a company can become part of the conversation and over time create advocates worldwide that spread your message to a larger audience than you can ever afford to reach through traditional advertising.
“In the end,” Abrams says, “the power is with the customers and a conversation with customers is far more valuable than pushing marketing messages at them”.
I think publishers are stumbling in the new, social, digital media space because they are still trying to - as you say - publish messages at an audience. That is just their reflex, their way, it’s what they have always known. It’s hard for them to realize that this comes off as something approaching windbaggery in the ear attuned to new conversational rhythms.
Publishers need to wake up and realize that the way forward for them is to start thinking of their digital properties as platforms and manage them as such.