(Not Really About) The Future Of Marketing And Stuff

Posted by Stephan on February 28, 2010 under Marketing And Stuff, Me Thinking |

I have to explore this part of me a bit more and start to be more open about it. But I have to approach it in a way that’s comfortable for me. Right now I couldn’t write a tutorial or something, although this might be fun too. But well, since marketing is, in my opinion, mostly based on just plain logical thinking, it means that it’s possible to play around a bit.

So to be able to speculate about the future of something it’s a good way to start with its past. And what first came to my mind was mating behavior. Animals showing off to attract partners to spread their genes. But also the fight for ressources. There are a lot of similarities.

A business has to “show off” to attract customers. But in this case the customers are not the mating partner - they are the ressources.

Then we have other businesses. So in the “fight” for ressources there can be friends and foes. Businesses who help your business getting customers or who work together with your business would fall into the category of friends. The rest parts into those who also want your customers, the “foes”, and those who just haven’t got anything to do with you.

The ones you work with could be classified as belonging to your pack or clan.

So in this scenario marketing would be the process of finding ways to attract new customers and holding on to the old ones.

In a very simplified way, these are the basic principles. As you can see the concepts behind them are nothing really new.

So lets take a step forward. Google, Youtube, Blogs, Xing, Facebook and Twitter.

Google

When you have a lot of information, it is only logical to find a way to sort this information to make it accessible in an useful and easy way.

Youtube

We have videos, tons of storage and fast enough connections to move a lot of data around … and a site is born that lets you upload your videos.

Blogs

We have the concept of writing a diary, which met yet another medium to do so. And hey - you can write other stuff there too.

Xing

The creation of a platform which helps people to form new business “packs”.

Facebook & Twitter

People have always been social.

I don’t want to talk bad about these sites. There was a lot of work and effort behind them all (I guess). But I wanted to show that the cause they all emerged was rather logical. And if it wasn’t them arising to the top it would have been another site that offered the same or a very similiar service. (On that subject a little sidemark. I think that in the long run, facebook will probably drive Xing out of the market.)

I also wanted to show that the concepts behind them are also very old ones. But this is about marketing or more precicely the future of marketing, which might be evaluated by taking a closer look about what it is like today.

The sites I mentioned play a huge part in it. People find you in their Google search - you get customers. People know you from Twitter or facebook (in a good way) - you get customers. And so on.

But lets take blogs, facebook and Twitter.

In a blog you can write a lot of stuff, at facebook you can write some stuff and at Twitter you can only write very little stuff. So the next step probably wont be writing even less stuff or even no stuff at all. That would be absurd. The next step has to be something different.

But I got off the point. They are all about communication and networking. So it’s like old stuff on a much bigger level than it used to be.

Pity. My brain is getting an overflow. Too much information I just wont be able to write down in an useful and ordered manner. Just been staring at the screen for more than twenty minutes. Not what I intended but at least I made a start and it was kinda fun :o).

That’s it.