So as I was saying we need to look at these markets and work out why they failed. They strained under the burden of the many start-ups that saw the pot of gold and chased it. But, and here’s the fun part, they spent more time trying to apply existing real world laws to a medium the likes of which have never been experienced! What we are facing today is a massive change in the global economy! With the amazing One Laptop Per Child style programs being run by open source heroes like Ubuntu’s creator we are going to see the rate of growth of users online pale in comparison to the phenomenal figures generated by the capitalist world!

These Open source networks are putting information in the hands of people who have never seen clean water! Who live day by day struggling to get by in a capitalist world with little to no experience of the vast resources that have become available on the internet! But the really exciting thing is that they are taking to it like ducks to water! Parents are using their children’s networks, each laptop works as its own wireless transmitter allowing distribution to stretch wider audience than has ever been conceived!

So what does all this mean when considering your marketing plan in the next five years?

Good Question.

I won’t pretend to know the answer here, as the answer is ever evolving as technology continues to be produced. What I will say is that I believe that we need to rethink the way we market online as a result. We will need to give away information to draw the customer, we will have to interact. It is no longer a case of whether we can afford to do it, kids are learning to program in schools! The thing that a smart marketer does online is give away information… that and provide free entertainment.

But how do I make money of this!?! I hear some of you cry. Won’t I give away my secrets?

Wake up call people. There are no secrets any more (Case in point Google Street View: check out the SMH photo editorial here). I want to build a portable air conditioner for $10? I find it online. I want to make traffic lights go green on demand? Well I dunno if it’s true but there’s a video on how to do it on the internet! No matter how many people I talk to it never ceases to amaze me how unique their own browsing habits are! What you are doing by giving away information to these people is getting them to talk about your product.

By interacting with your client you are encouraging them to talk about your product and how it affected their lives being involved with your business… and you can’t get a much better endorsement than that.

When we try and market ourselves in today’s world we are faced with a stark reality. Information is everywhere. From the moment a child is born they are inundated with marketing material and propaganda at a rate far greater than the average adult member of the community in the 1800’s. Traditional media has consumed the public eye for generations as every facet of life is dissected, analysed and remarketed to sell a bigger, better, sleeker life for the modern man.

Every time a new platform for display has been invented a revolution has occurred: from the renaissance to the incredible growth of the Hollywood Star Factory to the much more readily available and convenient home Television empires. Now throw into the mix the internet.

This network of information, and that’s what we often forget is that the internet was built to collect and correlate information, has grown out of control and requires a shift in perception. Each mode of communication has its own language and rules, but how do you rule a database generated by the zeitgeist? So far the only thing that governing bodies and infrastructure have attempted to do, as always, is control this medium. There was alleged Pentagon documentation on the need to treat the internet as an enemy weapon for god sake!

Having said that, there is some infrastructure utilising the internet effectively: “Criminal” activity is the big one. The porn rings, bot networks and pirate trade the list goes on and the labels even longer. They’ve taken advantage of this new, incredibly intricate, medium and exploited it to the hilt. The Marketing world is in a shambles, how do you keep up with an open market free for all like the internet?

So far the answer in Australia has been the ridiculous hope that peoples “over 35 don’t use the internet that much”, a mentality that has been proliferated by the government with its ridiculously slow rollout of its so-called broadband policy. As the figures are coming in and proving the naysayers wrong, that cry is changing. Marketing has taken a bold leap into the on-line marketing world and clung to the largest of the few legal forms economic infrastructure on the web.

Google.

Adwords.

That’s our answer?!? We’re facing a revolution and Australia’s marketing creative throws their hands in the air and cries: “Adwords!”?!?

I don’t need to tell you how ridiculous that sounds.

What Australian marketers need to do is the same thing that marketers do best. Look to other markets. See what is happening in America and the UK and witness the way that it has shaped the face of their economy…. ok… Now I hear you all chuckling to yourselves, the internet was punishing to economies when it first started to get really fast in the larger markets. But let’s look at them and learn from their mistakes as well! So far, these markets have failed!

There will be more on how I see the marketing world needing to changenext week so please leave your comments and come back to find out what we believe needs to occur an why.

So where does one start when it comes to planning an On-Line Campaign? First and foremost you must look at your current web presence. Do you have a site? Does it look like your current Off-Line Marketing? Do you have a landing page that shows all important information without the need to scroll? Do you have E-Commerce? If you don’t have a Blog would it benefit you and your business to start one? What about SEO, is your site optimised?

These are all very important questions and each need to be addressed. The thing about new media and the on-line world is that we have to think laterally. Once you think you have come up with a solution, go through it again and add to it. Chances are in the initial design of the content you missed possible links in the body text, possible outbound links to associated businesses, and other interactivities that could be implemented on a page. The web is a big place and you should be sure that you’re site is utilising as many tools as feasible.

Make sure you are utilising at least some basic SEO techniques, a large percentage of sites don’t. By simply choosing some effective keywords and adding them into the code of your site where ever possible (meta tags, HTML Comments, Headers image descriptions etc.) you automatically increase your relevance to search engines, in turn giving you a better position in the search results.

The possibilities on-line are endless and this is where thinking laterally comes into play. You need to ensure that every possible connection that can be made with the minimum of fuss and maximum benefit to your client (be it to an applications, a website, a database). If you have a lot of technical jargon, do you have a glossary? Don’t have time to do a glossary? Why not link to WikiPedia?

As designers, businesses and marketers in this new age of information pollution it is our duty to cut through the clutter. The first step to any web marketing campaign should ensure that visitors to your site are directed to the information they require with minimal navigation on their behalf. Without this first step your on-line marketing will ultimately fail.

One thing that constantly surprises me is the corporate sectors misunderstanding of on-line marketing. Regardless of the difference in the way that the internet has changed our consumption of information, one fact still remains the same: a good marketing campaign requires solid planning and a strong hook. In fact if anything the internet has made this even more important.

All too often I find that business owners and marketing managers are quick to throw money at the internet without actually understanding how it works. Unfortunately certain businesses (who shall remain nameless… for now) are taking advantage of this naivety and returning little to no results, by utilising techniques (such as AdWords and SEO) that show some growth and minor financial return for the marketing budget.

Understandably business owners and marketing managers have grown wary of all things web based. This means that those businesses who are trying to build proper campaigns are being seen as door to door salesmen selling nothing more than snake oil.

On the flip side we see that many business owners and marketing managers have cottoned on to the concept that on-line marketing is the way forward and is returning something (unlike many sites developed prior to the .com boom). They hear all of the “experts” running around talking about buzzwords like “SEO” and “Social Media” and trendy products like “Google AdWords” and they want a piece of the pie.

So what does this contradictory combination mean to the legitimate on-line marketers of the world? It means that these businesses end up trying to feel out the water and gauge results using small budgets, in a conservative effort to see if these forms of marketing can work for them. They know it needs to happen NOW as the competition is on the same tip, but they can’t afford to trust legitimate on-line marketing businesses because they’ve been burnt before.

This in turn places both businesses in a bad position from the start. A Google AdWords campaign needs to be well researched for a start and secondly it takes money to get results. Many businesses utilising the AdWords system have spent thousands of dollars on pay-per-click with on-going analysis of what is and isn’t working for them. This means that the business paying for the advertising will not see the results they want despite the best efforts of the company providing the service.

Before it gets to this point it is up to the on-line marketer to ensure that they have informed the client to the best of their ability. A strong web campaign should not start with AdWords, first and foremost the business needs to have a strong site with easily accessible information. If a visitor to the site cannot find what they want in less than ten seconds they will navigate away. As you can see if this happens the money spent on a campaign that gets them to click through to the site is wasted.

Like any campaign an on-line campaign needs to be worked on from the ground up. If the company doing your web marketing has not taken the time to develop your on-line campaign in sync with your off-line campaign then it is likely they are spending your money on advertising without having planned out a strategy that works for your business.

For on-line marketers don’t try to sell the buzz word or product of the moment, it may bring you money straight away but you will lose clients when the bubble bursts. Be sure to review what your clients business actually needs rather than jumping on the latest web bandwagon. We have seen on-line marketing crash before (we all still shudder at the ramifications of the .com bust) let’s not let this happen again or businesses will lose faith in the web all together.