Remember the dot-com boom when everyone talked about how the Internet and technology would create a paperless society? A funny thing happened along the way. A ton of paper now sits on our desks. Yes, that's right, we actually consume nearly twice as much paper as we did before the advent of computers.
But we're talking here about a humanless society, not a paperless one. The $10 million question of the moment is, "Will technology reduce the need for human interaction or will it create even more of a need for it?"
And regardless of the outcome, what does it mean for marketers?
Human-free
Let's take the first scenario: no human interaction.
While most people are still scurrying around trying to find a business model for the likes of Twitter, I see a frightening trend taking shape. People are Twittering live events such as religious services, sporting events and conferences. So even if you don't attend, you can still get the benefit of the 10 or 20 most valuable nuggets that made the whole event worth attending. And you get your day or week back (plus thousands of dollars in the case of the Twittered conference).
This has broad-reaching implications for us... Read more
Archive for Mark Niehaus 
Why Are Billions Spent Trying To Guess What I Want?
Have you noticed Microsoft trying to revolutionize search by not only displaying what you're looking for but also by predicting what you might also want to see?
Amazon pioneered this concept with their state-of-the-art recommendation engine. And Double Click did it with search ads. How far will Microsoft try to go?
Well, I have a surefire way to figure out what customers want … ask them. People don't care about what an advertiser thinks the consumer might want. People only care about what they do want.
If a consumer cares about your site, your brand or your products, they will tell you what they're looking for (if you ask). If that same consumer isn't willing to give up a tiny bit of information in return for a better, more customized experience, then they get … a bland experience.
But bland is far better than guessing what they want and being wrong.
The danger of guessing
In a past life, I was involved with an enormous data append project. We were building a recommendation engine for a field sales staff to use as they dealt with prospects. All they had to do was get a ZIP code (and a name really helped) from... Read more
Is Kindle the Next Game-Changer?
The VCR did it. The Walkman did it. Palm and the iPhone did it as well. They all changed the way people consume information. Now it may be the Kindle's turn.
There's a lot of buzz lately about how Kindle is changing the way people buy and read books (it already accounts for 35 percent of book sales where the Kindle version is available, says Amazon). But will it ultimately change the way people consume information? Here are my thoughts:
The Ultimate Recommendation Engine
Thus far, Amazon and others have the ability to recommend new books based on what you buy from them. But with the Kindle, Amazon will have insight into what you actually read (hey, every click of a page turn is countable).
Think about all the books sitting on your bookshelf that have never seen the light of day. Amazon thinks you read them and keeps recommending more books on the topic. Now they can understand what you read based on the amount of pages turned. They can even scour the book's bibliography and recommend academic whitepapers and research studies.
The amount of knowledge available on each Kindle customer will dwarf what they know about us now.
But the... Read more
Paid Search Will Do What?
We all know that paid search is a fairly easy, inexpensive way to drive traffic to our sites. Who wouldn’t like a marketing medium with costs based only on the number of prospects who click through?
But that’s small potatoes. There’s an almost unknown, more strategic use for paid search that will change the way you build your marketing campaigns, regardless of channel. Paid search should drive all marketing messages. That’s right. You read it here first. Paid search should be the first in market when launching a new message.
Go ahead, call me crazy. But please don’t miss my point. Paid search gives you the opportunity to test almost any message instantly and cost-effectively. You can quickly and clearly see which messages incite readers to click on your ad, and which messages languish like they’re invisible.
So imagine if you took paid search to market first to test your messages, and you shared the successes and failures with the teams working on TV, print, email, display advertising — everything. How many failed campaigns might that prevent? How might that lift the responses you might otherwise get?
I believe that marketers should look at paid search as a real-time, early focus group... Read more
Will You Stop Already With The Web 2.0!
According to Wikipedia, the term "Web 2.0" was first coined by Tim O'Reilly in 2004. It was meant to identify the Web as a business revolution that now focuses on the Web as a platform.
But since then, everyone is bastardizing the term by heralding every new evolution with this silly "release moniker." Even the so-called inventor of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee (no, not Al Gore), has questioned whether one can use the term in any meaningful way, since many of the technological components of Web 2.0 have existed since the early days of the Web.
This begs two questions: Why has the DOT-O phrase stuck and what are other alternatives?
Let's start with the first question (hey, it's the easy one). People adopted the DOT-O phrase simply because it was catchy and everyone after Tim O'Reilly were just plain lazy. Even if it doesn't really describe anything of distinction (i.e. the Internet isn't a release!), it was cool to say.
Now that people in the Internet community are over-using it (I actually saw the phrase "e-Pharma 3.0" in writing recently), I am curious as to why other industries aren't picking up on it. I mean, why can't the mattress industry release... Read more
