Juice Digital, Pure Digital Marketing

We already are equipped with the most robust and least expensive toolset for communications that the world has ever seen. We possess massive distribution networks with tiny transmission costs. We are our own authors, publishers, printers and distributors.

Why do we seem wary of this new medium? Because resources don’t follow distribution in the obvious way as it did with the other media (radio, TV, films, outdoor). But maybe that’s not where we need to make an immediate margin?

Communication is now modular. We are meeting smaller, multiple challenges rather than tackling one major, simplified issue. We are communicating in a smaller way and having simpler conversations. We are the dial tone, the cinema and the radio channel put together.

Yes, bigger issues will still require managing. There will be those stories that need the larger stage. That won’t change. But you can do business without social media. You can implement the same marketing strategies and throw budget at those strategies in the hope that it will net some multiple of more traffic/customers/sales.

Most will be trying social media (and other Marketing 2.0 techniques). Just ask yourself, and your department, a few questions that Mitch Joel posited to see if you are ‘ready’ for social media:

• Are we willing to not just listen, but to respond and adapt based on the back and forth?
• Are we willing to become active participants — not just in our channels but in the other channels and spaces as well?
• Are we willing to change the focus from being on our company to being about everybody — us, them and the entire community?
• Are we willing to be participants with just as much fervour and passion when it’s not good for us, but good for the community or the industry as a whole?
• Are we willing to be really, really open and transparent?

Change is coming, and it’s not easy to understand. The economic downturn is rippling all over the world’s markets. And, yet, the needs, the goals, the returns that companies have to derive to stay alive in their marketplaces are higher than ever, too.

In 2009, communications meets a fork in the road. Same budget, two different tracks: larger scale, and tailor-made. You do larger scale to stay alive and afloat where it makes sense.

You do tailored, or smaller touch things like social media, where a more subtle hand is necessary to influence opinion-leaders in your marketplaces. The balance is not an easy one to strike but there are a couple of characteristics of Marketing 2.0 to help you get it right.

These techniques are measurable and there are some light-footed digital agencies who are dedicated to getting you big results for your buck. Talk to them and find out how to manage myriads of conversations with the same technology that allows you to hold this dialogue in the first place.