No Marketing No Cry
by Aner Ravon

I owe my recent acquaintance with John Sviokla’s blog (bio here) to Guy Kawasaki. The key posting that broke the ice for me was Marketing Remix (with Antony Paoni), which has landed on an astonishingly fertile mindset. I would not attempt to summarize the entry, you should take the time and discover for yourself. The essence, though, is with suggesting an observation and an analysis to the rapidly changing marketing paradigms in this new world 2.0 of ours, a world in which all information is accessible and in which peer to peer communications is always available and immediate.

We all know the examples. Compare buying a picnic table to what it was like only 10 years ago. Back then, you would probably go to Home Depot over the weekend and buy a table. If you happen to be not as lazy as I am, you would probably make a phone call or two to a friend beforehand, preferably to one whose picnic table hosted you at one particular point you remember. Today, you first go to eBay during work hours, Google during commercials, then through some consumer report sites, your IM buddy list and retail chain websites. At the end you can either purchase online or go to the near office depot, but that by itself would not secure their purchase. It very well could be that you would use Home Depot as your window shopping helper, then go back home and order online. Not to save money necessarily, but to beat the system. Where does that put Home Depot? Who’s their competitor? What should their marketing strategy look like? What should the marketing strategy of their online competitor look like?

This havoc requires totally new marketing thinking and John Svioka suggest a few simple tools. Instead of the traditional 4 Ps (product, place, promotion, price) he suggest new 4P’s  - changing Place to Presence; Promotion to Persuasion; Price (static) to Price (dynamic); and Product to Personalization.  John’s explanation of these factors is well constructed and eye opening. I’ll leave that to you.

Now how do we apply new marketing techniques when it comes to web 2.0? This is one respect in which web 2.0 services seems like a riddle not yet solved. As a matter of fact, it seems nobody has a freaking clue. We’re all running around like ants trying to figure it out and look stupid in the process. It almost seems as though the right strategy is to be ignorant and have none (Yossi Vardi anyone?). 

A few reminders: 

1. Penetration strategy? - Getting on Techcrunch! What can I say, that’s few 100k page views per day for a week or so which should translate to a few 1000s of sign ups. Very effective if you get there, but what if you don’t?

2. Target markets? Segmentation? No need. The new philosophy is “let me do a product for myself, there must be millions like me out there. They are my target market”

3. Long term strategy? Forget about that! You have a silver bullet anyway. Don’t spend anytime thinking about tomorrow, focus on today. Stickiness? Retention? Switching costs? Not important! I need to invent new stuff for tomorrow anyway and my 22 year old engineer is already working on it.

4. Business Model? The internet is free! So how do we make money? Adsense! Woo-hoo! That was easy, wasn’t it?

5. Quality? Support? Maybe…right now we are at perpetual beta. I’ll think about it when I’ll have millions of users.

6. Media and PR? What are fellow bloggers for? I have been kissing their asses for so long, now it’s their turn to kiss mine. Check out my Alexa!

And on, and on, and on. The new marketing war is about getting in your face first and if we put our serious mask on then it does represents a genuine need. In a world of exponentially growing information everybody gets lost. And when you get lost you appreciate nothing more then finding a friend. We all follow Techcrunch because it makes us feel nice and cozy in a web 2.0 mess. We all search Google because we know it’s probably an acceptable first step to anything. No wonder web 2.0 entrepreneurs are not concerned with product, price and positioning. Nobody seems to care about these anyway when the first need is to reach safe harbor. What you should be concerned with is getting in people’s faces and that’s it.

So should we burn the marketing books and enjoy the chaos? It’s kind of nice when its all about instincts and not about education. It’s definitely easier this way. But it seems overly shallow even if you subscribe to the old “billion flies can’t go wrong” half truth. Yes, there is a lot of virgin excitement we all feed from. Yes, a new information echo-system still needs to shape, one system in which Techcrunch and the like play a role but are not the only players.  But it will happen, I have no doubt. Over time. People do get wearier of the overflow of trash and will start hand picking favorites, developing selective taste and becoming much more quality sensitive.  It happens all the time and in many so-called web 2.0 territories it is happening already (I happen to think MySpace will be gone sooner then people think and join its brothers in crap heaven). This does not mean old marketing techniques will re-apply. The Picnic table example will only become more severe and the current information overflow will only steep.  Home Depot has a hell of a problem to solve. But marketing in an essence isn’t going anywhere, on the contrary, it is becoming a more competitive playground. One that will separate the men from the web 2.0 boys and in a shorter time then most people think. 

Aner Ravon
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