Watching And Waiting For Early Adopters On Web 2.0

The credit for the explosion in Web 2.O companies goes to early adopters and Web 2.0 companies' ability to reach them. Unlike the Web 1.0 companies of the early part of the century which, diverse though they were, focused on one to one interaction with consumers, Web 2.0 companies focus on multi user platforms.

Web 1.0 companies were selling something; supplying something; providing something for individual users. Web 2.0 companies are providing platforms for users to create their own experience…with other users. Think Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendsFeed, Flickr, blogs and wikis.

Early adopters, that is, the technologically savvy have played a big role in driving the popularity of these new companies. When you're a tech or Internet Company, your early adopters, the ones that eventually drive your business or sometimes are your whole business, are easy to find.

But there are ramifications of Web 2.0 and the companies it spawned for traditional companies, old line manufacturers, service providers and even offline retailers too. Web 2.0 companies have made it much, much easier for many traditional companies to find innovators and early adopters for their products and reach them with marketing messages...maybe.

While frequently early adopters are associated with technological products, the basis for the theory Everett Rogers developed that segments users across a bell curve based on how quickly they adopt innovations, is applicable to just about any category of product.

Two key challenges marketers face is finding and communicating with early adopters and crossing the chasm where momentum picks up and the product gains acceptance by the early majority. Web 2.0 solves both of these problems for many companies.

If you follow Lazarfeld and Katz' Two Step Flow Model, which goes something like this:

... mass media information is channeled to the "masses" through opinion leadership. The people with most access to media, and having a more literate understanding of media content, explain and diffuse the content to others.

You can see why the new way of communicating, creates a funnel which smart marketers can use to direct marketing messages to the wider market. Opinion leaders have always played a key role in the success or failure of new products. In the 21^st word of mouth marketing is becoming one of THE key strategies used to launch a product.

Seth Godin writes this week in The Myth of Launch PR (which by the way, I found when it popped up on Socialbrowse) about companies that passed on the big media spend usually associated with a new product launch: Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Harry Potter, Google, William Morris, The DaVinci Code, Wikipedia, Snapple, Geico, Linux, Firefox and yes, Microsoft. (All got plenty of PR, but after the launch, sometimes a lot later).

Many of those names you'll recognize because... someone told you how wonderful the product was. Today that's even easier and happens at a much faster speed through social networking sites, blogs and other Web2.0 companies.

Finding and exploiting that user or users that can spread the word about a new innovation, cheaply and quickly is the Holy Grail of marketers in the 21^st century. But, the quest is not without its challenges.

Social networks and book marking sites frequently rise and fall before anyone has a good grasp on the audience they serve. Unlike the mainstream media, potential reviewers are fickle. They agree then choose not to review a product. (OK, sometimes the mainstream media does this too, but less often.) They create a big presence and attract a large following ...then disappear because life gets in the way. They get lost in the shuffle overshadowed by tech savvy, early adopters of the Web 2.0 TECHNOLOGY.

Just as marketers scrambled to try to determine how most effectively use Web1.0 technology, we'll struggle with Web 2.0 in its nascent stage. We know that early adopters are much easier to find now…if we could only figure out how to locate them. :P

Moving From Marketer To Content Creator Drives Sales In a New Era

Often lost in the discussions about innovation is the role that enlisting consumer, especially key influencer, support is in determining the success of a new product. Despite hours spent in labs and on exacting market research, many an innovative discoveries fail because of ineffective launch strategies.

Identifying and building relationships with opinion leaders is something we try to do in all of our projects from well before the product launch. This is, of course something that the software industry does on a regular basis, enlisting developers in the early stages and releasing beta versions for testing.

In the consumer products arena however, this is used somewhat less often and frequently results in lower visibility and ultimately less success. In an age when consumers are easily accessible through the internet, it seems almost irresponsible to ignore this opportunity to involve them in the early stages of development and create an active community of supporters prior to launch.

An article, How to sell Vodka, discusses how one company, using limited resources, created a hot new product by using the power of the internet and word-of-mouth marketing to build a winner in the distilled spirits category.

"We can't do things with more money or more people. Our aspiration is to find people - customers - who are discoverers and disseminators."

In an era when budget cuts force companies to look for creative ways to market products, innovators are changing focus from top down marketing to content creation.

"We have gone from being a marketer to being a content provider," Phillips said, and he wasn't referring to the contents of a cocktail glass. "Our job is to create photos and tools and content that others can use to build our brand."

How to implement or even initiate this strategy leaves established marketers scratching their heads and grasping at straws. This is, perhaps why it is often the purview of smaller, quicker, younger companies filled with entrepreneurs not MBAs.

Working the web, filled with social networks, blogs and message boards can be a daunting task for the uninitiated. Navigating the realm of social marketing in search of key influencers requires an understanding, not of strategy, but rather of tactics of the web that may be unfamiliar to mainstream marketers.

But that's where the innovators of the product adoption cycle reside these days - on the internet.

Word-of mouth marketing is rapidly replacing aspirational marketing as the tactic of choice for rapidly growing companies. Yes, celebrity endorsement still has the power to drive sales, but a positive review from a well-known blogger can often add legitimacy to a product claim. Viral marketing campaigns and well-executed online PR campaigns reaching key influencers often perform just as well as a mass media ad buy, particularly in smaller fragmented categories. Original content, particularly amusing YouTube videos can raise awareness faster than broadcast ads (though reposting those on YouTube works well too) as they rapidly spread from user to user.

As companies, large and small, scramble to refocus established marketing departments in the new era of Web 2.0, creative strategies evolve to become personal. Content creation becomes the goal. And it is, of course, not your "father's" content. Hipper, of course, but more honest and interactive as consumers play a greater role in influencing product design.