Notes from Gartner's Digital Business Conference in London, UK on Sep 4, 2014

My notes from the Gartner’s Digital Business Conference “Taking the Business Digital: Your time is Now” in London, UK on Sep 4^th, 2014.

The presentation was divided into two subjects facilitated by two Gartner leads,
> The State of Digital Marketing – Jennifer Beck
> Social and Mobile Marketing – Jennifer Polk

The following is the random scribbling from the (well-presented) Gartner conference for your reference. Kindly ignore the grammar and structure. 

THE STATE OF DIGITAL MARKETING

The digital organisation today, in collaboration with marketers and IT, plan on investing their budgets on,

• Building a seamless Consumer Experience (CX) journey for their consumers 
• Developing a robust Content Marketing strategy for context relevant engagement
• A Loyalty program that craves for advocac
• Data, yes you read it right. This is the holy grail of everything an organisation needs to know about a piece of content or track their consumer's digital footprint
• Developing program standards for the marketing of two speeds - reactive campaigns and full blown projects
• Conceptualising experience across touch points across multiple channels to connect with the consumers anytime, anyplace, with relevant content

CONSUMER FIRST

• The latest battle that the brands fight today is that of developing a seamless consumer brand experience across all channel touch points. 
• The buyer journey today is no longer linear. Consumers are looking for a “great experience” across channels. However, the definition of “great experience” keeps changing. It extends beyond brands’ products & services. And the line between products & services is non-existent.
• Gartner says, by 2016, 91% of companies will compete on the basis of the customer experience. 
• Brands & vendors/agencies must constantly evolve their capabilities around UX, content strategy to keep pace with the digital and consumer trends, else they will be left behind. Remember your competitor is just a click away!!

STORY SCAPING

• To succeed in digital business build the dream and vision for your clients, excellence is in the delivery. Tell constructive stories to your leads to elevate your pitch.
• Rethink your sales model by focusing on solutions than talking about pain points. CxOs know their pain points, they want to know what you are going to solve for them and how you are going to solve for them. Focus your pitches on these aspects.
• One question that every CxO’s would ask the sales account directors – What are you here to do for me? Why should I be spending my valuable time with you? This is not new, and always existed. Articulate your value propositions clearly.
• Today, CIO's are looking to engage with vendors who have clear visibility on how they are helping brands solve their challenges rather than talking about just technology and systems. Back to the first point - it's about story scaping!

IT’S AN AD, AD WORLD

• Marketing world is all about ads and engagement. 
• Buyers are channel blind. They don’t see channels, they see engagement, they experience.
• More and more brands are looking to evolve content marketing into their digital strategy - offline or online, across channels.
• They want to enable the discovery of intellectual, contextually relevant content in-house for their employees or curate contents to meet their consumer needs across channels.

LOYALTY IS GOOD, ADVOCACY IS BETTER

• A set of consumers who may have been loyal for many years, and some of who may have been inactive, will only generate a fraction of revenue and brand impression as compared to a recently  acquired consumer who talks about the brand with friends and families. Target such consumers. They are the one's who will build advocacy, and ultimately resulting in more revenue and brand impression for you.
• Get it right with the right team. Focus on tracking the consumer behaviour through marketing automation programs to deliver contextually relevant content to consumers.

BE SOCIAL, BE MOBILE

• The young today is always connected – on mobile, in social. 
• Gartner says, 71% of consumers use their smartphones atleast 5x per day
• Gartner says, online search using mobile device continues to be the leading trend followed by social
• Gartner says, Mobile traffic drives 22.3% of the revenue, whereas Social traffic drives 18.3% of the revenue

Brands and vendors who talk about mobile first, social first have to act fast. Just being mobile first, social first is thing of the past. Today you need to be talking mobile always, social always.

THE CMO vs CIO CHALLENGE

• CMO’s have always hunted for profits and demanded results. Gartner says, CMO’s will spend more on technology than CIO’s by 2017. Whereas CIO’s have always focused on business case and demanded cost optimisation & technology consolidation. 
• They both are right, but the stairway to heaven is in focusing on a digitally led organisation.
• The digital organisation structure today is being promoted in many firms to bridge this gap. The primary digital roles with budget, control and where digital marketing is critical to success are,

o   Consumer experience leader

o   Digital commerce leader

o   Marketing technology leader

o   Marketing analytics leader

o   Multichannel marketing leader

GARTNER DIGITAL MARKETING

Access to more (and much accurate) details from Gartner on http://www.gartner.com/marketing/digital/

Holding the Social media Torch @ Olympics 2012

mobile statistics stats facts infographic (2011)

By 2014, mobile internet is set to overtake fixed internet access. This was the big headline from Microsoft Tag's Mobile Marketing Infographic last year.

Source: Microsoft Tag

Insanely cluttered Social Media Marketing agencies

Source: Luma Partners

A Complete Guide To Every VC Firm Doing Digital Investments

15 keys facts and conclusions to know the future of the Internet in 2015.

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

Bitcoins - a decentralized digital currency

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, distinguished between “value in use” and “value in exchange” – in his own words: “The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called ‘value in use’; the other, ‘value in exchange’. The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any use-value; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it”.

According to Smith, the value in exchange is the power of a commodity to purchase other goods and whose objective measure is expressed in the market. A virtual adaptation of this want-based value in exchange now exists, also called – “Bitcoins” (Currency: B). Ever heard of it before? Perhaps you have not been labeled as one of those into-the-digital world technology geeks whose life revolves around the digital space and virtual worlds. Not that I am one either, but hey, then we all know that curiosity killed the cat. I was enlightened about Bitcoin’s existence whilst working with a media and entertainment start-up on devising and supporting partnership concept for payment gateways. Whilst evaluating the consumer behaviour, apparently this medium of payment caught my attention; that’s how the inquisitiveness built-up. At that time Linden Dollars, QQ Coins, and Facebook credits were just starting up.

Wait you are still wondering what a Bitcoin is anyways? – It is world’s first digital currency that was devised in 2009 by a programmer called, or atleast he/ she is believed to be called, "Satoshi Nakomoto". Bitcoins are digital currencies (coins) that are earned by solving real-time networking security problems. These coins then can be traded for real currencies on exchanges (where Bitcoin trading is legal), or for goods from certain businesses that accept them. Now read this: Bitcoin is a concept run by internet users and not by any business or bank. The concept of exchanging Bitcoins needs only a computer, an internet network, and a flash drive, which also acts as your locker. Since the concept was devised on open source, anyone could view the code. For this reason you as an individual must have basic computer security knowledge to ensure that there is no digital theft or hacks. Still confused on how it works? Ok so try this analogy – ever heard of peer-to-peer music sharing - hello Napster: the bane to the media and entertainment industry, and a boon to the pirates. If you haven’t heard about Napster, then it is about time you got your foundation right. Coming back to the point, the Bitcoins work like peer-to-peer music sharing networks, except that they are a decentralized internet society. The demand for the same grows as long as the internet users use Bitcoins and circulate it.

Bitcoin has no banks to report to, nor it is associated with one (remember I mentioned, the concept is driven by users and users alone), so you just end up saving extra $$$ that you always wanted to, in order to avoid paying those extra commissions and fees to set-up and maintain an account. In other words, it has no central monetary authority to monitor the transactions online, which only means that is unlikely to expand beyond a few niche segments such as the online gamblers, hackers and other ill repute behind the screen underground characters. Some good things about the use of this digital currency are that transactions across the globe become easier – and moreover it is free. Also your account is never frozen or kept inactive – so you can now plan on an epic timeless expedition across the globe without stressing about what happened to your account. It also forms a great way of conducting easy transactions for petite and freelance businesses. Wouldn't you want to have such a thing when you aren't investing much? And yes, you need not worry about the inflation, since the supply of the digital coins is done at a predetermined rate. At the time the concept began the value of one Bitcoin was approximately about 60 US cents, and at the time of this blog post, it was trading at approximately US $15. You may want to check the website ‘Mt.Gox’, that allows trading of US Dollars (USD) for Bitcoins or Bitcoins for USD, 24/7 - now wouldn't you want such a hassle-free, round-the-clock control on your money?

Upshot: Stock markets interest me in general, and I found the concept of Bitcoin quite fascinating and interesting especially looking at the two year currency valuation. As per Reuters, approximately $130 million worth of Bitcoins are now in existence, but the number is not expected to explode enormously. But like any other currency, a Bitcoin’s worth also fluctuates with demand. Since Bitcoin is a system run by users, the understanding is that it will either see an extensive recognition or it will not. It will by no means go away until people decide to bring it to an end. It will keep running as long as the users have the will and ability to keep it going. Bitcoins, a very good concept, is probably attracting large number of eyeballs in the digital space, but because of the lack of a central monetary authority they are probably disaster-prone. In my opinion, it is all but a giant digital ponzi scheme ready to burst soon.

Image source: Picked up from internet