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Each issue of CMO Close-up features an interview with a CMO, as well as other marketing executives answering that issue's "Big Question."
This week's feature:
Close-up with Laura Howard, CMO, ECI Telecom
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Shakeout ahead for Web 2.0?
Traditional tactics may grow in cost-conscious times
Christopher Hosford
Story posted: November 10, 2008 - 9:30 am EDT
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The country's deepening economic woes may do more than slow traditional marketing campaigns in favor of digital outreach. It also could cause marketers to abandon as superfluous in hard times some high-buzz marketing techniques that many have considered experimental.
Viral videos, mobile marketing, social media, rich media, and even gaming and virtual worlds, while sexy and intriguing during flush times, could go by the boards as marketers focus on tried-and-true performance marketing.
“When things get buttoned down a bit and there's less money to go around, marketers may turn away from these experimental things that require outside talent,” said Jeff Chamberlain, VP-corporate marketing with marketing software and services company Aprimo Inc. “People will turn instead to e-mail as their first, second and third way to go because it's less expensive and they can see results.”
While few figures exist to measure recent expenditures in experimental digital marketing, there has been a fall in the price advertisers are willing to pay for space on ad networks. Spending in this category dropped 21% in the third quarter compared with the previous three months, according to a report by ad optimization company PubMatic.
But not every niche in the digital marketing world is slowing. Interactive rich media, for example—which includes widgets, video banners and animated GIFs or Flash ads that prompt viewer input or stream business information—still intrigues marketers. Nielsen Online reported in September that spending on rich media advertising increased 60% in the first half of 2008 from the year-earlier period.
“Rich media provides for more interaction with users and not just clicks,” said Peter Kim, president of Interpolls, a rich media ad server company. “They can feature both branding and direct response ingredients.”
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WHITHER SOCIAL MEDIA?
Marketing via social media also may take a hit, due perhaps as much to b-to-b marketers' abiding suspicions of the media as to the economic downturn.
“B-to-b buyers do tend to have their online communities, but I'm not convinced this whole experimental social sphere maps very well to b-to-b buying decisions,” said Gord Hotchkiss, president-CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, a b-to-b search marketing and research company. “So marketers might be saying to themselves, "This didn't work very well in good times, so that's double the reason for abandoning it now.' ”
Hotchkiss added that social media and video appeal to users' emotions and passions, and b-to-b buyers tend to be less emotionally engaged in their purchases.
“These people don't have the motivation to sit through a 7-minute linear video,” he said. “They just want to get their price and fact sheets, and pass them along.”
However, Hotchkiss said, he does view mobile video and blogging as having the potential to rebound.
“Mobile video is something that enables functionality for the user. It can be both a marketing tool and a manual, and isn't dependent on emotion,” he said. As for blogging, Hotchkiss sees its value in the sharing of views from thought leaders.
“On the other hand, marketers haven't quite figured out how to use this medium yet,” he said. In tough economic times, he added, “the stronger b-to-b companies will focus their core competencies around marketing building blocks that offer accountability and some sort of direct-response mechanism. They'll avoid the gray area of social connections online.”
Disputing Hotchkiss is Duane Forrester, senior program manager-search engine optimization at Micro- oft Corp., who said some experimental marketing techniques could weather the storm well.
“There is nothing experimental about blogs, discussion forums, online video and social spaces,” said Forrester, who like Hotchkiss sits on the board of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. “Those are in the vanguard of the niche revolution that is happening online.”
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"INTENSE' DIGITAL SILOS
Forrester said the sourcing behavior of customers, whether business or consumer, has moved too far into “intense” digital silos of interest for marketers to abandon central means of reaching them.
In the end, marketers' decisions to use experimental outreach, which relies on subtle impressions and credibility, may be trumped by the basic need to drive revenue.
“Marketers never respond in balanced ways,” Hotchkiss said. “The fact is, the pendulum has been way too far on the branding side for too long.” M
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