INTERFACES

The World of Online: New Opportunites for Marketeers

Nimish Vohra

We Changed the World, the World Changes Us

ne of my favourite stories is, The Pedestrian, by Ray Bradbury.1 It captures to an extent the essence of the world we live in, and what the future might be like. The story, written in 1951, set in AD 2053, picturizes a world with little or no human interaction, a world full of screens for viewing the world. Another time I might want to be the protagonist of the story, but right now I will put on my marketing commentator hat and share how the world is changing from the marketing perspective, and how we can reach out in this fast changing world, this world increasingly pervaded by screens of all kinds. Just fifteen years ago, when I was in Mumbai working for UTV, we did not even have a landline phone at home. Frequently, I would stay up the whole night (some times two nights at a stretch!) at office, working on some animation or show packaging design. Each day I did not turn up at 10 in the night, my family would simply know that I would be late. Next morning my wife would patiently call me from a telephone booth next to where she picked up milk for the day. Lets turn the clock a couple of years back, when I was at IIT Mumbai. The only way to communicate with my parents was to write a letter they did not have a landline phone at home. And a letter would get exchanged perhaps once in three months given my own and the postal departments vagaries. And over to now: even for a pre-decided meeting everyday, when my wife picks me up from office, at a pre-scheduled time, at least two SMSes and/or phone calls are exchanged. My kids forward me interesting messages that they get on e-mail. My daughter in class 8 talks about friends bringing cell phones to school, and friends getting a cell phone as an incentive for doing well in studies! Well, once in a while even I step by my wifes Facebook page, wish her a happy birthday or ask whats for dinner tonight. :-) Things have changed for sure, and changing by the day. I watch less TV (much less now that I have stopped watching cricket), am not loyal to any magazine, and read

KEY WORDS Online Community Social Media Contextual Advertising Trending Twitter

http://mikejmoran.typepad.com/files/pedestrian-by-bradbury-1.pdf

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very little physical newspaper, and even in that, loyalty changes every few months (You cant blame me! the standard of each newspaper being poorer than the next). I get most of my reviews of movies from comments people leave on Facebook, I get most news, articles of interest, and updates as an instant message from a friend on GTalk, Facebook or Skype. I research online for products, prices, and information. I track my investments online, and dont remember when I physically visited my main bankers.

masses to set up their own professional-looking content publishing sites. Instant blog updates would be sent to subscribers through RSS (really simple syndication protocol) so, no more visiting a site to get an update. And, Google genuinely turned the industry around by allowing people to actually earn money off their publishing by having Google display contextually relevant ads on the site. Google of course earned a big commission on these ads. So, unlike Geocities where the writers would be put off by the ads, here was an opportunity for them to make a bonus just writing the stuff they liked of course the writers did not mind the ads. And, Google made a lot of money off the commission off the long tail of writers (more about long tails below).

You Can Read. You Can Write Too!

Way back in late 1990s, when the world was changing for good with the advent of internet, we all thought that the world had probably changed as much as it could have. (And I am sure, given where we are today, you would agree that 10 years ago was waaaaay back. There is even an online wayback machine2 that helps you look at snapshots of old sites). All businesses were putting their websites together. And people who were not businesses yet got ample funding to launch their online websites and portals. Media houses such as The Times of India turned online, and more new online properties came up almost from nowhere indya.com, rediff.com, etc. But except for the novelty of the medium, it remained one way. Publishers would publish and readers would read. Yes, interactions could be faster than writing to the editor one could comment, one could rate articles in real time, but the medium essentially remained one way. People at large were still consumers of information. The web was essentially Read Only. There were some path-breaking sites such as Geocities.com that helped people have their own websites, but put too many roadblocks as well for people. Ads were irritating, deletion of accounts due to unuse, etc. And of course technology did not support instant consumption of updates (which came with RSS only a bit later). Around 2005, blogging started picking up, and almost instantly, the web turned from Read Only to Read Write. It became extremely easy for people to create their own content. And the content got churned out in masses movie reviews, views on news, even breaking news. The barrier to set up was low platforms such as Blogger and Wordpress made it extremely easy for
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We Speak to the World, The World Speaks Back

Sure, blogging changed the web from Read Only to Read Write. But, but, but... But more was yet to come (and is yet to come, of course). Communities started to form on the net. LinkedIn, Orkut, Twitter, Facebook... Friends, Fans and Followers came together on the net and tracked what each other was doing or had to say. And suddenly, it seemed like everyone had something to share. And micro blogging was born. Say something in 140 or so characters and be done with. Your network of friends, fans, and followers sees it, and can instantly comment back with text, or like it, or forward it to friends. From having a page to write content and relying on the good offices of the web (search, Stumbleupon, e-mail to friends, subscriber word-of-mouth, etc.) to getting traffic in, each person now starts with an army of friends and followers to reach out to immediately. While Facebook, Orkut, etc., started out as a network for friends, they are rapidly morphing into networks that businesses can leverage.

Brands and Communities, Beyond Websites

Ten years ago, every business wanted a website. Today every business wants an online community Communities in almost any shape or form. Another matter that most might not realize what they need a community for, just as businesses did not know what they wanted a website for ten years ago, but today nobody debates the need for a website there has been collective learning and wisdom. The community space will evolve as well.
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Wayback machine:http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

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One can build a community on platforms such as Jive and Ning. Most communities come with out-of-box tools for community interaction short message updates, profile pages, ability to add third-party widgets to the pages (Twitter, etc), newest members, active members, member scoring algorithms, etc. Or one can opt for building communities on open public frameworks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like. One can create personal networks, with thousands of friends as part of the network -- you sneeze, and you can let the network know. Or you speak at a professional event and let the community know about it. One can create pages for brands or a cause or just about anything! Brand pages can have hundreds of thousands of followers, where brands can connect with their followers and fans and spread marketing messages.

the basis of the phrases that are used in an article. Google shows ads in Gmail on the basis of the content of the mail. Well, it is just a matter of time before we get ad SMS-es in the context to telephonic conversations we have with our friends. Context has been used very effectively by shopping sites offering suggestions such as people who bought this bought also bought; LinkedIn offers suggestions like people who viewed this profile also viewed, and news and information sites suggest related news and info to readers. Communities are all about context All people bound to the same cause or brand. All people liking the same story. All people with similar tastes and profiles. All people sharing the same bookshelf. All people who hate the movie Yaadein.

You Like It, I Like It Too

It is no more a one-many world. It is no more loudspeakers dispensing information, with the speaker behind the loudspeaker playing a vital role in what is being dispensed. It is becoming a many-many world. It is becoming a collaborative world. Search, reviews, shopping, news almost everything is getting a collaboration hue. One can read on LinkedIn what other people in the network are reading; people can check how others have reviewed a movie or a restaurant on sites such as mouthshut.com; people while shopping can check out reviews and ratings of books and products. We share news as it happens on Twitter and Facebook that instantly spreads across the network. If I Like a brand page on Facebook, my network sees it, and can Like it too, and the Likeing spreads virally.

Beyond Jargon. True New Age Language

While contextuality continues to be strong, trending has started showing up. Twitter shows topics that are trending all users see trending topics on their Twitter page, which leads to people seeing what is being tweeted about the topic. Twitter has now even started showing sponsored results a movie like Toy Story 3 could be shown here if the movie producer sponsored it. Bidding is in: The online world provides opportunity for publishers to do real time price discovery -- a dream come true for all publishers. In real time, the publisher can match inventory to demand, and price goods on the basis of the demand. Google can charge higher for ads if there are more ads than spots available. Advertisers now dont get into fixed cost deals with publishers. They have to place their maximum bids that they are comfortable paying. The publisher charges on the basis of what others have bid, and the number of competitors. Of long tails: It is impossible for small advertisers to book a spot on Star News. And small need not be really small. To get a spot, you probably need at least INR five lakhs three lakhs to create an ad (on a really shoestring budget), and two lakhs for a single 10-second spot around 9 pm. But with online advertising, it is really different. If you have INR 500 to spend, you are most welcome! In the online world, the 80:20 rule hardly applies. It is no longer the 20 per cent of the advertisers spending 80 per cent of their money online. Most online

It is All About the Contextual

With the advent of Internet came contextual targeting. Contextual advertising has been a part of most media planners. A Sarita would most probably have ads that relate to womens needs, women being the biggest audience of the magazine. A good planner or a sales person might have been able to get a relevant ad near a story or article e.g., an ad about crockery or dishwasher next to an article on how to keep crockery shining. In the online world, being contextual is the key. Search engines show ads on the basis of the exact keyword that a user is searching on. Ads on news sites are shown on
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revenues come from the really long tail of advertisers and spenders be it Google, Facebook, Farmville3 or an online book shop. Usability: The world of online is new, and most of us are still figuring out how to interact in that space. It is not like setting up a brick-and-mortar shop and knowing instinctively what goes into creating a good shop. It is not like designing a new magazine or a newspaper. Most of our conscious lives, we have visited shops and read magazines. But interacting online is different how do we tell all we need to tell in 10 seconds, and within the top viewable area of the page? How do we get users to fill up long passport and credit card forms when the systems might crash? They might do it across 4-5 sittings; they might have different people filling up different sections of the form. How do we assure that consumers are not confused while buying on the site, and would trust you enough to share the credit card details? It is important for us to make the sites usable or userfriendly (well, consumer-friendly, if you wish). Usability is an important branch of online marketing that is frequently missed by marketeers, but can go a really long way in retaining and attracting customers. Resources for usability are available under human-computer-interaction4 (HCI) nomenclature as well.

E-mail The Expanding Frontier

There seems to be nothing new age about e-mail. But access to databases and technology providing end-toend analytics has taken e-mail to a new level5 . With support of some good e-mailing tools,6 one can track multilevel campaigns. Mails, at different steps, with different messages and intent, can be sent to people who have opened the mails but not taken any action, people who have opened and taken some action different actions can trigger different mails, people who have not opened at all, etc. Campaigns can be designed with as high as ten levels.

Analytics Putting it All Together

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half.7 While online marketing does not have a complete answer, it comes close. Quite close. One can track and measure almost every action and its effect on the final outcome. Getting data on whom the e-mails were delivered to, whether they were opened or not, what exactly did the visitors to your site do all this is passe. Tools are making the leap to mapping ROI to behaviour. Google now offers tools to analyse the effect of people who might have just seen your ad and not clicked, and visitors who might have clicked on your ad, but while it did not result in a conversion, how it might have assisted in conversion that happened on another ad.8

Not an Ad, but Engagement

Marketing is moving beyond the regular advertisement paradigm. It is now happening through engagement brand communities that people can join and connect not only with the brand but with other members of the community as well expert and help communities that people join to get advice on varied topics; games and applications that people play or download. Even ads are taking a community hue ads on Facebook are substantiated by data of other users in the network who have interacted with the ad in some way.

New Challenges
Of course, there are challenges aplenty. Social media and communities are a great place for people to engage with the brand. But if things go wrong (well, there can never be a guarantee that they wont), it would take very little for people to publicly denounce the brands product or service. And it may require a lot of experience and understanding to manage such outbursts. 9

ROI of e-mail Relevance: http://www.forester.com/rb/Research/ roi_of_email_relevance%2C_2009/q/id/5434 Some of the tools: LeadForce 1, TrueInfluence, ExactTarget, Boomerang Attributed to John Wanamaker of Lord Leverhulme Google Advertising Innovations: http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/index.html 1) Nestle mess shows sticky side of facebook pages 1 2) http://prdisasters.com/five-lessons-from-nestles-facebook-pr-disaster/

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http://www.farmville.com/ At Zynga, our mission is to connect people through games. We make social games that are free and accessible for everyone to play. http://www.hcibib.org/ Human Computer Interaction (HCL) is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

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Spam is on the rise whether it is e-mail or content on websites or communities. Given the volume of content and the use of marketeers to use these mediums for their own end, it is getting increasingly difficult for users to sieve genuine content from advertorial or spam content. Given that the medium is so new, and things change almost everyday, it is difficult to predict outcomes, based on experience. One simply needs to try a lot and find the right mix for ones own self or take an experts advice.

One couldnt have predicted five years ago that Facebook would overtake Google on volume of traffic to their respective sites.. Three years ago, one couldnt have predicted the exponential growth of Twitter. Well, I really have no clue which of the current online properties will compete with Facebook or Twitter in the next few years. As marketeers and business owners, we need to be aware of the changing landscape and keep ourselves receptive to signals from the space; and adapt ourselves suitably to extract value in the windows of opportunities that present themselves. We are in for exciting times, and I am looking forward to it!

No Island on the Horizon

Future is History. If ever this was true for anything, it is for the online medium.

Nimish Vohra is the Vice President and Country Head (India) at Regalix, and is responsible for driving business development and client satisfaction. He has over a decade of experience in digital marketing, human factors, and creative design. He has helped turn around many BtoB and BtoC businesses, including that of one of worlds largest banks. His areas of interest include ROI-oriented marketing, role of creative messaging in ROI, Web2.0, and optimal digital footprint for established businesses and startups. He comes to Regalix from Star TV, one of the largest entertainment and media compa-

nies in India, where he was the Programme Manager for next generation cable/satellite television programmes. Before Star TV, he helped build ChaiTime, a large online community of NRIs. Prior to that, he worked with Sony Entertainment and UTV as their Creative Lead. He has a Masters Degree in Visual Design from IIT Mumbai and an Engineering Major. e-mail: nvohra@regalix-inc.com

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