Comments on: The Open Web Is Not Going Away

By: Matt Visser

Matt Visser — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:12:48 +0000

That was a really good read, with a lot of variables to be considered. Adam, I think you’re 100% right in most of what you say, but I think Mitch’s response above is also pretty much spot on. If anything Adam, you seem more concerned about search & the web (which is fair enough, it’s where we are) and Mitch seems to be looking for external touch points were consumer engagement can happen sufficiently enough to make a trip to a website redundant.

My humble 2 cents is that at the end of the day it’s going to come down to individual brands and where & how their target market want to engage (& ultimately where we as marketers can create conversions).

I spoke to a friend today about the company he works for selling camper vans (weird I know) & he told me that his over 65 target market were active on niche social sites, not major ones at all, but still made their purchasing decisions largely while browsing niche print magazines that they subscribe to.

Another local brand here in South Africa started a mobi-site for soccer which cost a couple of rand a week & within 2/3 months had a larger readership than some seriously well-established print sporting magazines. It was scary the speed of growth.

Anyway, thanks for probably the most thought provoking read I’ve had today.

By: Mitch Joel - Twist Image

Mitch Joel - Twist Image — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:01:46 +0000

Many thanks for the additional perspective. My thoughts do not bring things down to a zero-sum game. My main thought is this: everything is “with” not “instead of.” I’m pretty clear in my Blog post that websites provide a tremendous value and they are not going anywhere soon (they better not as this is the bulk of my current livelihood!), but I’m less optimistic that brands are really open and paying attention to where their consumers are. I’m not seeing enough brands embracing mobile as more and more people are starting their searches (or first brand interactions) on that platform (and whether the stats are there to prove it, that interaction is going nowhere but up in the coming months and years). That all being said, as we untether more and more, these interactions are going to change, and it simply won’t all take place on a big website (check out what H&M is doing on Facebook – it’s incredible), because people will have different brand interaction needs. It seems pretty clear to me that in the near-future you’ll be buying all of your Amazon goodness right off of your mobile (have you seen the iPhone app? WOW!) and never going to a “website” as we have defined them to date (think about how different the interaction will be on an iPad version of website?). For me, that Blog post was about how the consumer is changing and what brands can do to figure out what suits them best. If, for some, that means focusing on driving people to their own website, great, but I think for some the model will be dramatically different.

In the end, I really do welcome the differing perspectives because that’s what makes this space so interesting.

By: Jon Buscall

Jon Buscall — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:35:25 +0000

Wow! What a fabulous post. I think the defining sentence for me is: “I do not agree with resting your whole web strategy in channels you do not control. ”

There’s so much talk of Facebook and Twitter at the moment in the B2B space that you’re almost being a heretic writing a post like this. But I think you’ve got a very strong point.

SERPS and Social Search are going to bring different kinds of traffic with different goals. I do think we have to work through our sites with different buyer personas in mind.

Moreover, I try to tell clients to make sure they drive traffic back to their own website. This is the place that, in the long run, you can tweak to deliver meaningful calls-to-action.

I’m curious to see how Mitch responds.