Mainstream Marketing

The growth of RSS feeds, blogs, viral marketing, custom media, and paid search has reached a point where they are no longer novelties, but requisite tools of the media industry.

 

A room full of marketers gathered recently in Toronto at our Word of Mouth Marketing Breakfast Seminar, as a follow up, we asked Toby Ward, Prescient Digital Media a few questions...

 

Q: What is the biggest thing that marketers need to do to effectively use online marketing in their overall campaigns?

 

A: Know your target audience. Whether through surveys, interviews, focus groups, usability testing, log analysis, etc., it's critical to understand your users and readers and to tailor your marketing in such a way that it resonates with their own personal opinions, preferences, and buying or reading patterns.

 

Q: Who's using online viral marketing 'right' in Canada? In the US?

 

A: In Canada, both iTunes and PureTracks.com have done well with buzz marketing. Outside Canada, Curves, Microsoft (for Halo 2), and Beer.com (Virtual Bartender) have all done good work and generated great 'buzz'.