Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years, you know what an iPhone or a BlackBerry is. Or at least you are familiar with the enhanced functionality of the latest models from some of the phone manufacturing companies in the market, the so called “smartphones”.

Wikipedia defines the smartphone as “a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities beyond a typical mobile phone, often with PC-like functionality”. That means the phone has a complete operating system on which a platform for applications runs (i.e. Java virtual machine/environment, allowing developers to write Java applications). Simply put, a smartphone is a phone with advanced features like e-mail and Internet capabilities, and/or a full keyboard.

vs. lap-phones?

Don’t bother looking into the English dictionary for lap-phone. It’s just something I made up trying to define the combination of a laptop and a mobile phone. If we would follow the same logic from Wikipedia’s definition, a lap-phone would be “a laptop offering advanced wireless communication capabilities similar with mobile phone-like functionality”.

Why would anyone want to build such a device? A simple answer will be: because there might be a market for it. Or if you want to answer it with another question: if mobile phones are embedding more and more PC-like functionality why shouldn’t PCs “borrow” phone-like functionality?

Well, I guess only time can tell if there will be a lap-phones market but in the meantime here are several PRO lap-phones arguments:

• The current trend in the mobile phones industry: phones resemble more and more with mini-PCs. Unless all the big phone companies are crazy or receive fake market research data, I strongly believe this kind of phone behaviour is what the consumers (will) want.
• The future of wireless communications is 4G – a fully IP-based integrated system capable of providing between 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s speeds both indoors and outdoors. It is so much easier for laptops to add wireless communication capabilities (i.e. add a radio module) than for phones to add a fully PC-like suite of applications.
• The size handicap. Just to be clear, the size handicap that I’m referring to is not the difference between a mobile phone and a 17″ laptop. A lap-phone size will be the size of a Nintendo DS or a PSP. In fact there are already a few mini laptops in the market that fit into that category (i.e. Acer Aspire One, Asus Eee PC). While the lap-phones will definitely not fit the back pocket of your jeans they will fit in a larger jacket pocket or a purse. Therefore, lap-phones can initially target the female segment of the market. Blue tooth devices can also be a great “ally” to overcome the size handicap.

The continuously shifts on the emphasis placed on the various IMC tools are an attempt to increase efficiency and maximize the impact of the IMC campaign. There are a few factors that affect these shifts:

• Changes in technology. Technology is one of the main catalysts for today’s changes in how marketing is done. Traditional media channels (newspapers, television) not only face competition from the new, emerging media channels (i.e. social media) and new sales channels (i.e. e-commerce) but they are affected by technological changes in other markets and industries. For example, the increasing popularity of personal video recorders that allow customers to “zap” the commercials has affected the coverage of television advertising.
• Increased number of information sources for consumers. Easier access to more and more information and the possibility of people to network with each other has put the customer “in control”. People value other people’s opinions. With social media anyone can set up a website and voice their views. Anyone can visit online meeting places like Digg and Reddit and promote the voices and opinions of others, and anyone can mobilize a group around a common cause on Facebook or elsewhere.
• Changes in customers’ behavior, lifestyle, wants and needs. With all the clutter and the increased competition, analyzing the cycle of customers activities that lead to the sale or are related to the product can provide useful insights on “new” channels that can be used to deliver the message. Changes in the behaviour (i.e. a good percent of young people spend more time online than watching TV) can influence the choices of IMC tools used.
• Avoid competition and clutter. In North America for example, a Canadian is exposed on average to 1800 ads per day and an American to over 3000. The “ad-fatigue” and clutter has reduced substantially the efficiency of the advertising campaigns. By choosing a less-cluttered channel an advertiser can avoid competition and deliver his/her message more efficiently. However the channel should still be able to deliver the message effectively.

There are many aspects of marketing such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) states that you can achieve a greater impact by coordinating all those marketing aspects than permitting each to work by itself. In other words, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

What are the main barriers to the adoption of IMC?

Although IMC can dramatically improve communication effectiveness and impact implementing the IMC process in an organization is not an easy task. Though the awareness about IMC is on the rise, implementation has been slow. The following “barriers’ are some of the reasons why the implementation has been low:

1. Top Management Support (lack of). Without top management support, it’s hard for any plan or project to be successful. Some of the managers still think that the marketing budget gets diluted and effectiveness suffers if multiple tools are employed or even fail to see that they can reach the target audience via multiple media channels (not just the traditional ones).
2. Accurate Metrics (lack of). As long as there will not be accurate metrics to measure marketing productivity, marketing expenditures in general will be seen by some CEOs as an expense that can be easily cut. It’s even harder to measure the actual impact of a specific channel as part of the overall impact.
3. Manpower (lack of). Small businesses do not usually have the manpower with cross-disciplinary skills to integrate their marketing communications. The implementation requires proper planning, redefining the scope of marketing communication, application of information technology and financial and strategic integration.
4. Changes needed in the organization. To implement the IMC process effectively, a company needs to follow certain guidelines. It should adopt a flexible organizational structure and change the mindset of the employees. It should adopt a customer centric strategy to design communication campaigns from the consumer perspective. A collaborative strategy is needed, that enables coordination and cooperation between various departments in the organization. This is sometimes easier said then done as rigid organizational structures (silos) are often “infested” with managers who protect both their budgets and their power base.
5. Theoretical and practical foundations (lack of). Although there is a lot of information about IMC in general and IMC tools in particular, there is still not a “standard procedure” that can be followed. What should a truly integrated marketing department look like? Should the PR department report to Marketing? Also, no more wild and wacky sales promotions unless they fit into the overall marketing communications strategy and so on. The practical aspects are still to be defined.

Most of the barriers that relate to HR and organizational changes can be overcome by training the staff. There is an innate resistance to change in people but with proper change management, the anxiety and fear of change can be put aside. The lack of accurate metrics however, can not be easily overcome as getting accurate information is usually expensive and sometime not even available.

A lot of forces are shaping today’s marketing role in organizations. Some parts of the marketing mix, which was traditionally the responsibility of the marketing department, are now the responsibility of other departments (i.e. the Sales department decides on distribution channels choice, pricing, sales promotion tools; the Production department gets involved in customers/suppliers service). What is happening?

- There is a tendency for marketing to be disintegrated and responsibilities to become split among various departments in the organization. Marketing is no longer the “job” of the marketing department; it is becoming a way of doing business in the organization.

- As retailers gain more leverage power and new media channels are emerging, the focus is shifting towards customer relationship management, trade promotions and field sales force (i.e. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and amazon.com).

- The need for quarterly results and the lack of proper metrics to measure marketing productivity have led to the decline of the marketing department (budget and man power), because the long-term benefits have not been taken into account. However, there is a feedback loop between strong brands and the marketing budget. Budget cuts lead to weak brand management and low product innovation.

Is Marketing Dying?

The marketing function as we know it is dying. The decentralization of the marketing function is a good thing because it usually improves efficiency. However, strategic planning decisions (i.e. media strategy, marketing research, brand management) should remain under marketing unit’s control as they require more marketing skills and a “bird’s eye view” of the situation. So, maybe “dying” is not the proper word. We should use change or redefine. Corporate marketing has been redefined as global brand management and marketing communication strategy. Two aspects are relevant to the changes in the way the marketing is seen in today’s organizations:

1. As the marketing becomes a way of doing business, some of the overall marketing strategy components are transferred to other departments within the organization (i.e. tactical marketing decisions become more the responsibility of the sales units). The marketing unit should however retain control over strategic marketing decisions and, as marketing responsibilities become dispersed, it should become responsible of building, sustaining and organizing marketing competence within the organization.

2. We should use different metrics for short-term (tactical marketing) and long-term (strategic marketing) goals. Product innovation is the major influence on long-term growth. Do not mistake product innovation with improvements on existing products or development of better featured products. Product innovation means: analyze the consumer, identify, anticipate and even create new needs. That’s what marketing does; it looks at consumers’ market spaces and identifies value gaps in the customers-activity cycle.

Conclusion

So, the role of marketing will be changing continuously; between short term and long-term goals, between centralization and decentralization. As long as there will not be accurate metrics to measure marketing productivity (especially in the industrial markets where there are less direct relationships between marketing expenditures and sales), marketing will be seen by some CEOs as an expense that can be easily cut.

Technology is one of the main catalysts for today’s changes in how marketing is done. Easier access to more and more information and the possibility of people to network with each other has put the customer “in control”. Until a few years ago, with “traditional” media, marketing was mostly a one way communication (from the company to the consumers). Word-of-mouth was still at low levels and feedback was time-consuming and not necessarily effective. Free market – people choosing to buy something else – was the only effective feedback mechanism.

Today however, consumers have great and collective power to “dictate” what companies do. People value others’ opinions. With social media anyone can set up a website and voice their views. Anyone can visit online meeting places like Digg and Reddit and promote the voices and opinions of others, and anyone can mobilize a group around a common cause on Facebook or elsewhere. The global loop is now closed: communication becomes bi-directional. Two-way communication is the most productive way: companies and consumers talking to each other, not at each other.

New Channels

New media channels such as social media marketing and online advertising/e-commerce are becoming more and more popular, especially among specific market segments such as generation Y and part of generation X.

- Social Media Marketing (discussions forums, corporate blogs, community groups, etc.) is a new low cost tool for companies to “damage control” bad news and also to get feedback from their customers (communication becomes a 2-way communication)

- New Sales Channels. Sales expenses are cut down when using e-commerce enabled websites. These virtual malls are open 24/7 and have better gross margins than brick and mortar stores (i.e. amazon.com)

- Online Advertising as a new media channel used for advertising, has lower costs than traditional media advertising (i.e. cheaper online advertising is said to be the reason why newspapers’ revenues from classifieds have dropped and continue to drop)

- Informational Websites can be used as ways to communicate the messages and/or drive customers to the stores (i.e. the BestBuy.ca website). Communicating efficiently product value is a way of increasing maximum value for your customers

- Online promotions offer new sales promotion tools (i.e. pepsistuff.com, where Pepsi customers can redeem points from bottle caps for prizes)

- Companies/Customers can save money by using Internet to compare sellers’ prices before purchasing, to train staff or to hire employees. Easier access to this kind of data makes the market research easier and cheaper.

Traditional media channels (newspapers, television) not only face competition from the new, emerging media channels but they are affected by technological changes in other markets and industries. For example, the increasing popularity of personal video recorders that allow customers to “zap” the commercials has affected the coverage of television advertising.

The conclusion is: the chosen media strategy and the promotion tools used need to take into consideration and anticipate the emerging channels and trends in the marketing today in order to deliver the advertised messages both efficient and effective.

Is everybody familiar with what MPAA stands for and the “war” they’re fighting against file sharing websites and users because they share movies? If not, then long story short; MPAA is the Motion Picture Association of America – representing the big studios from Hollywood and they are against online file sharing websites, accusing them of encouraging the online piracy of movies.

So, what has marketing got to do with all this? Well, let’s look at the big picture; the studios produce movies, so we can say that the movies are their products. When compared to other products, movies have quite a few distinctive attributes. Among them is the copyright attribute. With other types of products, staying ahead of the competition is a tough game and it involves continuous creation of added value for the consumers, because competition can either create a better product or at least copy what you have and sell it for less. Price, as part of the decision to buy a product is used by no-name brands and store brands to sell their products. You can actually buy similar if not identical products for less money (i.e. no-name toner cartridges for laser printers sell for half of the branded toner cartridge).

However, this is not the case with the movies. You can not make another movie by hiring the same actors, using the same script and director and only changing the name a little bit. Therefore, there is no official “store brand” competition for the big studios. Once a movie is produced, they don’t have to worry about someone else copying their film and selling it for less. On the other hand, the arrival of peer-to-peer technology changed the movies market. The studios now face competition from torrent trackers and other file-sharing websites that offer a similar/identical product for free.

I believe that changes in the marketing mix for movies can help MPAA staying ahead of the “competition”.

Let’s Add Human Nature into Equation

So what was the response of MPAA? They were of course pissed off and started hunting down these websites. And theoretically they are right to do it! But although MPAA has won several victories shutting down a few major public torrent sites and won some lawsuits against others, piracy is still growing steadily with modern studies showing more and more participants. Why? It’s human nature!

It’s within human nature to resist authority and try to get things for free. I’m not saying that sharing movies is a right thing to do, but face it MPAA; you can not catch everyone and you can not fight human nature.

The Alternative

For the moment the only thing MPAA got from bullying some people around was bad public relations; no effect on reducing the piracy levels. Maybe it’s time to look at the issue from a different angle. So, Hollywood, are you listening? Instead of focusing on “competition” you should focus on your customers; make your products stand out, deliver superior value to people watching and renting the movies so they no longer want the cheaper version of the product. Re-think the way you market your products and educate your customers instead of hunting them. How? Simple! Emphasize the added value, that “something” that your products have and copied movies don’t. Here are a couple of examples:

1. Customer experience. You can not get the same visual and audio experience from enjoying a movie in a theater, with your friends, by watching the same movie in your room. Start advertising that feeling. I can even picture an ad with two teenagers talking about a movie. One of them is terrified and has his hair raised and the other one is calm. The idea is that the terrified dude watched a horror movie in the cinema and the other watched the same movie, but at home. Or another ad showcasing a family laughing and enjoying themselves just after getting out of a theater.
2. Added Value. For the DVD sales, put a small coupon or a code that you can use on the movie website and register for a contest to win something. These kind of added-value incentives will make people by the product instead of geting a pirated copy. By adding value to the product, you are fighting file-sharing.

The money needed for the proposed advertising and extra incentives can be taken from the salaries of all those fat cats lawyers hired to hunt down websites. I believe that the return over investment with this approach will be higher.

No matter if your website is an informational one or if it’s an online store to sell your products, you want people to come and visit it. Without visitors your information remains unknown and your products remain unsold. So, you need some sort of advertising in order to attract customers and visitors. A great deal of the web traffic you get is driven by the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN, because entering search queries in the search engines is a primary method of navigation for most of the Internet users. So it’s obvious that it is desired to have your website coming up in the search engine results pages (SERP).

With millions of websites out there, users usually check the first couple of results pages, so it’s important that your website is listed in those pages. You can do that by “buying” yourself a place in the sponsored links area or, showing up for free, through “organic” results. SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization is a collection of techniques and practices that will make your website show up in the first page(s) of organic SERP.

The objective of SEO

As in any other endeavor you need to have defined goals and objectives; because if you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know you got there? The goal for SEO is to rank in the first page(s) of the SERP for specific keywords with the final objective to bring in web traffic. So, the first step in obtaining good rankings is keywords researc. Effective keyword research is at the core of your SEO efforts can mean the difference between your success and failure.

The SEO – Internet Marketing relationship

SEO is a part of your overall web marketing efforts. It is an efficient tool to get you quality traffic, but to convert that traffic into sales it depends on how clear your marketing message is (“sale” here is used as a broad term for a product sale, a subscription, a quote, etc). To improve conversion rates, first you must analyze the traffic you’re getting, to see what type of visitors come to your website, traffic sources and which pages are the most and the least successful. This way you will know what needs (or needs not) to be changed on the pages and how your visitors are entering and leaving your website.

Think of SEO as the goal and the Internet marketing as the objective. Goals are general directions that are not specific enough to be measured (i.e. get better ranking, get more web traffic, etc.) while objectives are specific and measurable. They are concise, you can measure them (i.e. get $10,000 in product sales, get at least 200 subscribers to your newsletter, etc.)

In conclusion, SEO is the goal through which you can reach your web marketing objectives.

Additional reading:

• Understanding SEO
• Internal SEO
• External SEO