Sunday, May 31, 2009

Online Marketing- some interesting insights!!!!!

The following article aims to look at the world of online advertising through the ambitious eyes of a new venture......

Is it time Zoozoo dethrones SRK? Seems far fetched, but at least people in India are talking about it. Type "Zoozoo SRK" on Google and you shall know. If Zoozoo is so famous, how can this interesting creature elude my conscience; no way!! But what interested me more than zoozoo was one of the reasons why it threatens brand SRK. And thus my thinking heart comes to the latest crown of the thinking minds of business heads (pun intended :) )- Online Marketing.

So with the usual "unconventionalism", I am back with the latest story of my heart on Online Marketing and how it is just the beginning of a tide which we are seeing. A look at the far end of the horizon and you get a glimpse of the pie of which you'd certainly want a share.

So the story begins a few years ago.

Growth of SMEs and startups in India in the past few years, primarily gave birth to this term called Online Marketing. Many small players started entering the market, but they were not able to afford the resources needed for the right publicity of their products. Then entered a medium which gave these players an option to exercise the publicity. This medium didn't need lot of money to spend and this medium was able to take you directly to your customer, through one on one marketing; unlike the other dominant mediums- TV, print etc. This medium not only targeted the masses (through ads on growing social networking sites and a growing giant called Blog- later to become less popular than its son Twitter), but also was able to reach directly inside the minds of potential customers through Search Engine Marketing. This was the medium which helped these smaller players find a ground which could help them scale huger (not higher) heights.

Then this medium reached a new phase when world's leading advertising agencies started their venture into this medium under different faces; and it was not long before the biggest players were able to understand how big this medium has become. And then you could see bloggers all around you; the biggest names in the glamour world to the biggest corporate houses could be seen in form of blogs and profiles all over the internet. The tide, clearly, was shifting. Slowly and steadily; virals, search engine optimization, networking sites, etc. started taking the centrestage pushing the importance of television comercials to a limit where they could be regarded only as a brand building exercise (and mind you, brand building is just one of the many parts of marketing). And then came, Zoozoo.

Zoozoo entered into the minds of the masses through the television medium, but it went on to rule the people through the online mediums. It has lakhs of followers on Facebook, thousands of blogs devoted to it and is one of the most successful viral campaigns ever. Though Zoozoos are not animated, they still have that charm to it which animated characters bring while being able to convey things which animation can't.

And now comes the interesting part, the success of Zoozoo on TV, print media and other places was not being measured in terms of the conversion rate into Vodafone customers, but in terms of Facebook fans or number of Zoozoo wallpapers downloaded. Silently, the latest child of advertising medium was showing its importance to the world.

And this means the graph of the growth of this medium still has positive slope and will remain so for time to come, to ensure that appropriate advertisement and marketing in the right customer segment shall no more remain the costliest affair in a company, which in turn means finally it will be the R&D department of a company which will use up the maximum of company's profits, which finally means innovative and entrepreneneural ventures are here to stay.

Now comes the most obvious questions of them all; despite the importance of this medium, will it remain cheap considering the competition it is generating amongst rivals and that competition always leads to war of money. Well, thats where the importance of online marketing comes to the forefront. Now, it won't be a war of money. It was a war of money when there was a limit provided to creativity, a limit provided to mediums of publcity; but with the latest thing, the options become unlimited, the mediums become infinite and ideas can never be restricted. Exemplifying, if a company uses a facebook page to rule over its customer segment, its rival can use Youtube to ensure maximum hits on a new page created by them, the third rival may simply go for Search Engine Optimization for its page, fourth one can create a free blog to reach out to the people, the fifth one may simply use the power of 3D wallpapers on free wallpaper sites, the sixth one can use the concept of viral emailing (by mixing a tinge of social messaging with the viral depending on the product requirements), the seventh one may go for networking sites' scraps, the eigth one may go for....... and so on. The ideas will never end and the impletementation of these ideas will never cost, unless....

Unless, the clients fail to understand the true schwerpunkt (a military term signifying the correct focus) of the online media world, which is creativity and NOT money.

By the above post I never meant to say that brand SRK is becoming dilute; it will remain as long as Pepsi and Coke remains. But what I can guarantee is that if I am going to start a company tomorrow, I don't need a brand SRK to reach out to the masses and to provide the basic platform to the company's innovation; what I will need is only the right blend of the cocktail of creative achievements called Online Marketing.

And to help others create this right blend, people like me are always there ;)

Well, wasn't this Online Marketing :D ? Well, if you don't think so type "schwerpunkt marketing" (for cases where my target group is the kind of people who believe in the concept of marketing using military strategies) on Google [or "online marketing Zoozoo SRK"].....

2 comments:

asu3011 said...

Well, right now, Google is giving the desired search results on typing the keywords mentioned in the post; but I am not sure that it'll be there for long as I don't really publicize my blog and use any optimization methods to do so.

So the aim of the post was only to show that online marketing is the only medium which can reach out to the right target group just at the expense of intelligence and not of money.

asu3011 said...

Seems like Cineblitz is also copying my articles ;)

Their latest issue has an article on how the marketing world is shifting from the power to stars to the power of creativity.