Lessons Learned--and Forgotten

Jim Sterne, this issue's cover subject, is a fascinating guy. An acclaimed author and founder of the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, Sterne is an in-demand speaker because of his insight and the passion with which he delivers his message.

But it's also because of his unique perspective. Sterne began teaching others how to market over the Internet in September of 1994--exactly one year after the launch of Mosaic, the web's first popular browser. The original online marketing guru, he's seen it all.

When asked to recall the earliest lessons learned online--ones that have shaped e-commerce today, more than a decade later, Sterne responds: learning not to employ "glitz for its own sake.... At the height of tech glitz hubris, some shopping sites were so heavy with animations...nobody could shop there."

It's simple, really. The latest online fads aren't worth a lick unless they further your customers'--and ultimately your business'--goals. And yet, many companies today are making the same mistake with the misapplication of Web 2.0 marketing techniques.

The problem is brilliantly outlined in Seth Godin's latest book, "Meatball Sundae." According to Godin, author of nine international bestsellers, a meatball sundae is the messy combination of two things that don't go well together--specifically, the latest Web 2.0 marketing tools (this is the sundae part) with a company founded upon selling "average stuff for average people"--you guessed it: these are the meatballs.

Meatballs, contends Godin, are best sold with traditional marketing techniques: advertise them heavily via the tried-and-true media. But bad news looms, he says. "The media depended on to sell average stuff to average people are fading. Network TV, newspapers and telemarketing and are all in trouble. Tactics from the new media are taking the juice out of the old marketing...."

Godin describes a crossroads. Down one road: "ever-increasing frustration as harried marketing VPs are challenged to use the new marketing 'Internet stuff' to prop up traditional organizations. Down the other path are nimble, intelligent organizations that are poised and ready to be propelled by the fresh tactics of new marketing."
The bottom line, says Godin? Don't ask, "How do we use the cool new tools to support our existing structure?" Instead, ask how your business itself might be altered to thrive with new marketing.

Godin contrasts two non-profits. One is long-established and relies on traditional marketing techniques. However, it has a fancy website with all the bells and whistles, designed to encourage people to sign up for e-mails. The non-profit periodically e-mails this list to raise money for its cause.

The other non-profit uses all the Web 2.0 tools at its disposal to connect would-be donors directly with those who would benefit from donations. So compelling are these stories, that not only do they elicit donations, but donors pass them along to their families and friends. After just a few months, the new organization was generating 10 times the traffic as the established one, raising more in a month than its competition does in a year.

It's certainly a lesson worth re-learning: the rapidly developing technologies of our Web 2.0 world can be extremely powerful tools, but only when aligned with our goals--and the very structure of our businesses, too.

Tom Dellner
Executive Editor