Internet has tremendously changed the human life and the landscape of global business. As more and more groundbreaking technologies and creative ideas come up with an unbelievable pace, there’re also more challenges and concerns which deserve more attention from the public: 

(1) Hackers and high-tech crimes:

     As more sophisticated devices and IT technologies are invented, the approach of hackers and high-tech criminals will get more complicated and unpredictable and in turn post bigger confidentiality concern on government and corporate systems.

(2) Information quality and accuracy:

     Google search engine has eliminated the boundary of information accessibility for individuals. But the consequent question coming to the users is information overflow. Now everyone can easily post any kind of information by one click, so researchers must to spend more time on filtering resources and clarifying the accuracy of intended contents.

(3) Individual privacy and security of internet transaction:

      Issues related to the security of personal documents and payment information will be magnified with the presence of e-commerce, social media and breakthroughs in cloud computing as well as locating and tracking technologies.

(4) Capability of innovating sustainable (inimitable) business model:

     Current customers prefer more integrated and customized products, they tend to have less loyalty and easily to be attracted by invented ideas. The accessibility of pricing and reference information also make them more difficult to be satisfied. Furthermore, the research and data mining techniques greatly improve competitors’ ability to obtain competitive intelligence How to continuously innovate unique and sustainable business models as well as inventing creative approaches to conduct competitive research will be a great challenge for all the online business. 

(5) Power of “word-of-moth” and “viral effect”:

     There have been several examples showing that the online media could either push companies into heaven or pull them down to the hell. How to create “earned media” by building up positive word-of-mouth and innovating hot topics to “go viral” online already became a vital factor for companies’ success. On the other hand, the most critical and the most difficult part will be how to manage negative and inauthentic message coming from unsatisfied customers and corporate competitors.

(6) Change of life pattern and the concern about losing personal social skills:

     Internet and high technologies has made our life more convenient. People could do almost everything by just one click or a word. People’s needs could be met without going out completely. In addition, many people spend considerable time on social media and online games by reducing social activities outside. This phenomenon will weaken their social skills and might also twist their life patterns in an unhealthy way.

(7) Education concern of young generation:

      Due to unlimited access to any kind of resources online, children could get negative information or log on inappropriate website without enough judgment. In turn, their behavior and personal value could be easily affected online and go out of track. Furthermore, they are easily get distracted by the internet once they get addicted to it.  

     “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” is a compelling book that the author, David Meerman Scott, integrated his blog works and interviews with different clients to raise critical perspectives of marketing and PR strategy in the digital era. By providing abundant real stories across distinct industries, he addressed many new principles that could be used in all kind of fields including corporate business, entrepreneurs, political groups, NGOs, governments and even individuals. Here I simply pick the most interesting parts from the book and summarize the main idea into several points:

(1) Marketing is not just advertising. It’s more about participation, understanding and communication.

     Many people agree that the traditional “4Ps” in the marketing mix become out-of-date. But when we look at the current marketing practice, most marketers still keep bombarding their customers by spending high budget on one-way and interruptive advertising or conducting aggressive promotions. They rarely think about the fundamental questions: “What the customer really need? “What they care about?”

     Most people don’t care about the products or services of the companies. They actually just care about themselves and want to find solutions to address their problems. The new marketing principle asks marketers to stop advertising and sales pitches. They have to construct a healthy relationship by talking and interacting with the customers directly and find out the main issue they really concern. 

(2) Leverage the power of social media and “go viral”.

     Social media is a powerful channel to interact with current clients, prospects and related influencers and in turn to get insights and supports from them. The greatest example is the brilliant strategy of Obama’s online marketing campaigns in 2008 presidential election.  Obama and his task forces allied millions of proponents from different states and got donations successfully by wisely integrating online resources and leveraging social media such as Facebook, Twitters and Youtube to launch effective motivation campaigns.

     The other good example is the video contest “The Best Job in the World” held by Tourism Queensland in 2009. The lucrative position for the winner raised a big fever in the internet. In addition, countless of bloggers and media such as magazines, radio, TV shows and newspapers discussed the job contest and introduced Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef. By leveraging the “viral effect” though the online contest, the company successfully made a terrific advertisement and drew public’s attention to the small resort spot in Australia.

(3) Talk with different buyers directly and figure out what they care about.

     Before delivery our ideas to the buyers, the most important thing is to know who they are and what they are thinking about. Therefore the first task for marketers is to identify various buyer personas and implement appropriate segmentation. Then marketers must devote great efforts to understand their audience minds. They could chat with different audience, follow their activities on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms or look at audience’s own blogs and comment on their articles, brows websites they go frequently and the articles or magazines they usually read to find out what is their favorite topic, their hobby and personality and the issues they do care.

     Marketers can conduct direct interview with focus groups to get more specific information about their key factors and criteria for their purchasing decision and incentives to participate marketing programs or to consider a new offer.

     Organizations could also consider to let marketer manage their own blogs. Blog is a good platform that enables marketers to introduce their companies and marketing their thoughtful insights. This channel could play a big role in getting critical feedbacks or opinions from current buyers or other influencers about companies’ products and services or in discovering unmet needs.

     In addition, organizations could utilize Wiki in the Q&A pages on their websites. Wiki software allows any visitor to post their questions and answers in the page, and this could effectively facilitate the direct communication between organizations and their audience.

(4) Let your buyers find you by using their language.

     If you want to be heard from the audience, you have to let them find you easily. That is, try to optimize the ranking of online searching list for your websites or blogs. The most efficient way to do so is avoiding using meaningless jargons and trying to integrate the key words and phrases that the audience usually use into your websites. Therefore, it’s critical to create specific contents or separate pages for distinct segments, since the words they use and the topics they care about might be very different. Once your websites possess most key words the audiences are looking for, the possibility for them to get your pages from online searching is greatly improved.

(5) Brand your organization by establishing online thought leadership.

     Thought leadership is a significant factor to brand an organization’s credibility and popularity. Except for traditional thought leadership programs such as seminars or business events, online media could be powerful tools to improve an organization’s online thought leadership.

     Marketers could establish their online leadership by blog posts, periodic news release, podcast series or free video clips. But remember, don’t mention too much about your organization and the products. The contents should be attractive or useful to the audience. Try to deliver interesting topics, related knowledge or tips to show that you do care about your audience rather than just selling your products. This is the best way to improve the customer intimacy and in turn to guide them into the buying cycle afterwards.

    To sum up, the capability to construct an integrated digital marketing strategy has become an indispensable competency for all kind of organizations. Organizations and individuals that could catch up the latest trend and marketing themselves by leveraging diversified online media will stand out eventually.