Viral Demand Gen Engine

Couple of years of back nobody could have even thought how Web 2.0 would sweep through everyone’s life, to become the Numero-Uno. There are appealing statistics which comprehend the fact of visit an individual would make during a day, which reinstate the position.

The rate at which this methodology has precipitated into the ecosystem is quite commendable and what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, where the way players are exploring, beneficiaries experimenting and end users relishing the engagement are just the right things at the right place. When we look at the players today they use Create, innovate and embed as their drivers for exploration.

Networking is never been so intrinsic, where engagement being more extrinsic it leads to roots which go on to develop applications, widgets, feedback mechanism, share, likes, streams, +1 and status updates. Social Media today has become the face for their respective brands, more importantly the interactive one, which no doubt comforts the consumer and also benefits by providing the right kind of feedbacks, inputs and updates leading towards service / product optimization & in some cases a new product idea. As we all know Dell has been heavily working on the social media tactic  to use thousand and odd status update to shortlist few best ideas, which finally go to make some of the successful Dell products.

Never the less, Web 2.0 is been a true revolutionary for marketers and the best to happen for any Brand, in terms of adding a face, connecting with prospects and consumer but on other hand it poses challenges on engaging with the fans (prospects & Consumers), extent of insights and last but not the least, the most dreaded of all the issues, handling demanding, unsatisfied consumers who could derail the engagement with negative updates and comments. Among the reputed brands there are some which use the later as a model to resolve problems of the customers and also channel for service & support.

If I would have to think, how Web 2.0 would be in the coming days,  it could be like the hosted services of the leading enterprise products, where every individual has their own page which has all their information on an application which would give insights on their skill up gradation, finances, Career and so on. In fact there are android applications which are getting developed to control house hold appliances through the mobile, which could be synced to it. Thereby making the social networking site the most used and depended site.

Social Media today is an evolving strategy towards engaging customers, virtual product visualization and the most important where every brand would like to use such an optimized, targeted, measurable, seamless methodology to run a viral demand gen engine, which helps them to generate a fully matured lead which has been influenced, informed and  endorsed.

The Viral Demand Gen Engine works on an integrated model of Engagement and Virtual Product Visualization engine, powering the viral through engaging fans (prospects & consumers) either in view of product conceptualization, optimization, improvisation, development or even to the extent of sampling & testing. The model gets more appreciated when these insights are used to reach the targeted audience through blog sphere and for deeper pockets, micro blogging (in the form of mobile apps eg twitter). The strength here is it could be in terms of consumer endorsements, which is powerful than any other media, which is one of the KPI in all the reputed companies. Or the combination of different web application, widgets and blogging to create a good appealing visualization. Exhibit 1 Below demonstrates the Viral demand Gen Engine.

WATCH THIS BLOG FOR MORE TO COME ON ENGAGEMENT ENGINE, FOLLOWED WITH VIRTUAL PRODUCT VISUALIZATION ENGINE AND UPDATES

Battle Of Differentiation Among The Social Networking Platforms

Web 2.0 saw revolution which went on to change the political scenario, babies named after the giant ‘Facebook’ and to top it, marketers found answer to their long lasting query on ROI. They have changed the way people used to reach their prospects and more over countering business opportunity. Life is been more focused and even smaller, the phrase ‘world is small’ has more meaning to it now than before.

The closer analogy to social networking is of the iPhone ad which states “if you don’t have an iPhone you don’t have the apps….. and if you don’t have a iPhone, well  you don’t have a iPhone”, which is (when applied to social networking) if you are not in one of the social networking sites, you are missing on the networking and to top it, today even recruiters have jumped into it, of course now it makes more sense to be in, then losing something.

Social networking today could be categorized into Business, Casual and Micro-blogging. We have seen good number of players moving into the space and making it big, and many of these are the pioneers, who have traced the path and been the part of the revolution, who are the leaders and category by itself. Competition now is becoming intense among the category leaders, and some renowned biggies who have tried and backed off are consistently trying to get in, to still carve a pie for themselves. The advantage with these biggies are, their application stack and  power of innovation, which makes them prospective leaders only if, they crack  the platform.

The battle lines are drawn and the success would be based on differentiation; which would be user interface, platforms, applications and engagement model. The leader would now have to be constantly on the drawing board and working on the differentiator model, as they would have to keep pace with new applications & concepts being developed using the existing model by the partners, in parallel ensuring the constant revenue streams from the existing model. The challenge now is on retaining the users and withstanding the migrations to newer platforms, which could be mouth watering.

The question which haunts every category leader, in different verticals, to answer on the differentiation, today  hangs on to Social Networking Platform, as it is a successful model and others would definitely follow to cash in.The key here would be to stick  on to User Engagement and Redefining Evangelism,  which would mean drilling down to the levels of analyzing the database and bringing in the right kind of interface and application which could glue the user tightly to the platform, to the extent where the user feels incomplete without it. Like how the customer centricity brought the Social Networking into their business, today the same paradigm needs to be imbibing into their platform.

The essence lies on Social Networking Site being the one stop shop for a user, apart from just networking and being in touch. We have seen the progressions here too in terms of; communities, forums, skills, News, creating groups, pages and so on. This would have to move in a step into associating with user’s individual planning, which he/she would associate to and use it as bench marking himself/herself for his/her development which could be either career, skill sets, evaluating options, consumption patterns, financials and so on.