Web Strategy Blog

E-Commerce 2.0

I've been doing some research on E-Commerce and the use of social media - its not something that we hear a lot about these days explicitly. Yet it seems like social media is more immersive in the E-commerce user experience than ever before. I like this presentation from Jaap Favier of Forrester, it has some basic points that resonate with Web 2.0 in general: consumers have multiple connection points, consumers trust recommendations from friends, influencer's have power, consumer generated content, consumer innovations and the fact that companies will offer experiences and collaboration - not just products.

For me - the ideal e-commerce 2.0 experience will be predictive of my needs, be dead-easy to execute/ fulfill and will have rich social and immersive experience attached to it.

Silicon Valley AMA Marketing Thought Event/ Contest

I attended the Silicon Valley AMA Marketing Thought Event at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The event was focused on ideas or concepts that solves the challenges we face today. What is the next big idea to change the face of marketing? Many thanks to President Gene Hall and the folks at SVAMA for putting on such an inspirational event.

There was an associated marketing thought publishing contest for the best idea. I was deeply honored when my entry "Web 2.0 Makes You ReThink the Basics" was chosen as the winner! The model below will be published in a book on Marketing Thought in September.

This is a model that I often use with Crimson clients in the Interactive Practice when doing web strategy or web marketing. It provides us with an innovative way to think about the more traditional "acquisition, retention and growth" marketing model in a modern way. It was great validation of the work we are doing in Web 2.0. There was a lot of fantastic marketing ideas submitted in the contest - you can see all of them in the SVAMA's blog.

There were many fabulous speakers at the event: Robert Goodwin from Gartner Research shared his insights on the "Ten most Effective Marketing Activities" and Tony Palazzo of Jack Morton talked about nGuage a new analytics measurement tool. Andy Sernovitz spoke about Word of Mouth Marketing - I loved his comment that "Advertising is the Price of Being Boring" ... basically that everyone should have something compelling that can be said about them that can be leveraged in WOM marketing! I picked up his book and I will do a review of it at some point. Guy Kawasaki told us about his new venture Truemors, which he was proud to tell us he launched in 7 days for a total of $12,107.09... in his lively talk there was a good lesson - which is that anyone can bootstrap a Web 2.0 company these days at minimum cost and in record time.

L to R:  Andy Sernovitz and Guy Kawasaki