Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Groupon: More money, To diminish more value?

I just read about Groupon raising $950 Million. Great news for Groupon. I was thinking more on the underlying impact for marketers - and that bothered me.

Groupon helps sell more by offering significant discounts, in return for volume. Many marketers discount products and services, to acquire a customer. In essence - it is diminishing value, as the marketer faces a short term hit on profitability, and perhaps a loss in many cases. Agreed?

Now with $950 Million in the kitty, Groupon will aggressively do more of what it does - diminish value for more marketers! In the end customers win, but its a circle, it will catch up soon. Are we looking at a bubble? Or is there enough profit buffer amongst producers, that this will just scratch the surface?

Obviously a very contrarian view - am i alone?

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Wishing all a super successfull 2011!

Ok, a bit late as we are into the 2nd week. But then the new year is still fresh in all our minds.

Somehow, the transition from 2010 to 2011 did not have the usual gap. Perhaps the environment was so stressed that people were busy at work even on 31st. Never before were so many of our clients available at office during the last week!

We seem to be all set for exciting times for digital marketing in 2011. With more and more users getting connected via the internet and mobile, and marketers finding that $$ are better spent on digital. With potential, there does come the pressure to deliver on the promises.

Here are a few key trends related to the digital marketing industry, that I feel will be key to our industry overall.

Adapt: The crazy growth of Facebook and Twitter, clearly indicated the presence of large vacuums in what users need in the new digital ecosystem. A similar vacuum exists for marketers - to leverage these. And the best part is - we will not know what it is - till it is out there! So every agency needs to keep innovating and investing to discover better methods to leverage these for marketers.

Educate: Any new method or technique, needs significant research and investments in the areas of defining models and then creating a system to educate practitioners and users - overall. Else, it will not overcome the proverbial "chasm" that exists before widespread adoption.

Share & collaborate: This is the only way, we agencies can help increase the pie. Rather than fighting over a small pie, lets grow the pie.

Happy 2011!