Very often we wonder where to advertise, how to spend that ever decreasing advertising budget, and as if current channels where not sufficient, we have 2 more important channels… Internet…and mobile… Mother of all .Today advertisers have to put lots of thought, even in the online world we have multitude options…the latest addition being social marketing. As entrepreneurs get bright ideas to reach out to masses, they get even brighter ideas to monetize that reach. This complicates things…Create opportunity to further expand the ecosystems and further adds more players to the matrix.

Current advertise ecosystem works hard to ascertain user behavior, their choices, and their browsing pattern online to arrive at a target base of users. Lots of effort goes to make sure that right advert is passed to right consumer at the right time. Obviously all the RIGHTS are important without which billions of dollars spend go down the drain!

But does all the money spend to identify the target user get converted to actual consumers who will buy from you???

Consumer buying pattern should not necessarily be impacted by adverts in conventional / current form, where advertisers vie for top slot. Yes indeed there is a probability of conversion if you are at the top, but then that is chance and chance can vary between 0 to 100 %!!!!!!

So all efforts we take in creating a huge, complex eco system, multiple players is to improve a chance of conversion.

Yes we do indeed require a form of advertisement, top of the mind… I will call that, which may not be required for sale but to keep the product in mind whenever a sale happens in future …brand management… image management…top recall value …Whatever you want to name it.

But much money is spend on current or nick of time sale something like consumer electronics, auto, travel etc.

The problem of intrusion gets worse on mobiles. How often does it happen that you are playing your favorite game and some ad gets in!!!!

How irritating is that. Mobile is as personal as you can get, one has to be more careful in that form of advertising.

Indeed we have opt in forms of advertising and that is second largest source of advertising, but here again we lack in nick of time.

I feel there is opportunity for alternate thought, a different way of working.

What we need, for both buyers and sellers, is a level playing field.

A level playing field where a leveled platform provided for all to transact. A leveled field is where all come to a same platform as equals , from then on leave to consumers to select best for them. (will borrow the term from “The world is flat ” by Thomas Friedman ..Hope he doesn’t mind!!!!)

But the important thing here is provide an equal opportunity platform.

it’s time to harness the real power of internet for consumers to exercise their right of choice any place , anytime and anywhere they want , I would call this consumer led  marketing …

It’s time for consumers to get best products at best prices using their choice,, not choice dictated by someone else.

Indeed we see an opportunity for alternate form of advertising, wherein we give consumers the right to choose an advert either online or mobile.

Docall does provide an equal opportunity platform of bringing buyers and sellers together…

Cheers to consumerism and way ahead!!!

In the media recently was news of marketing chief of a soft drink major proclaiming that consumer is the king!

Not that he realized that now…What they definitely realized that things in the connected internet world are indeed different than a few years back…

With the continued domination of social media, it is matter of time or should I say seconds before information reaches across the globe…

Again not that information didn’t reach across few years back, it did indeed…but now  thanks to social media it has context…it is personalized…it is handled with accountability…

There is a difference between someone throwing a piece of information/news/advert on you (which mostly you will reject/unread)…and someone who you know telling about something  …

Again you may not be interested, but may you will have a look (because it came from known source) …after glancing May you are interested or you send that information/news/advert to someone you know who might be interested!!!!

That is the impact of social media …based on how we handle/use it’s a great platform…

So coming back to our marketing chief…Surely he needs to do lot of thinking to be sure each dollar spent on advertising is fruitfully used…

Consumer can make or break a brand…so in this era and future there will be no power brand, no super brand, only one brand, the consumers!!!!!

Our marketing chief and likes of him…now have countless avenues for advertising, many probably they are not even aware of…

Gone are the days of mindless advertising (refer to a previous blog on this subject) when even the options were limited…so decision making was easy.

Now with so many options indeed need to put thinking cap on!

At DoCall we may not have something for the chief directly, yet we can provide a platform, an opportunity for the consumer ecosystem to be fruitful, to coexist under same place…Competitive (for sellers) yet healthy… and mutually beneficial to all players    …

Recently across media was news of a social networking site eavesdropping on member’s private data.

Well this might be true or may not be.

Why would someone do that…eavesdrops on members and their friends and families data, their likes, dislikes? The reason …all this personal information is indeed goldmine for advertisers.

So is it that all this data is shared with the advertisers and drive revenues???

Surely there has to be better ways to generate revenues.

If we take step back and think …why we do this…we realize the problem is with the pure play internet business and their business model…

So we have great networking site, we have hard core fan following…fine, how to monetize that.

And so in effort to monetize we start getting some bright ideas!!!

Surely whatever activity that happens on the networking site itself is great opportunity for advertisers instead of trying covert initiatives.

The fallback is worst…Government officials across the world start getting bright ideas on regulation and control.

Though regulation and control looks highly impossible in mature economies, but eavesdropping is equally unpardonable.

From business model (revenue generation) perspective there is much data that flows on such sites which can indeed generate fruitful information on consumer pattern and other related areas)…Which some giants are already doing.

So what is the easy way out …may be we cannot mine the activity data to give some accurate information on consumer behavior, their likes, dislikes etc…Nor do we want to eavesdrop…

so why don’t we ask the consumers themselves what they want , what they like ,,what they would like to hear about , what they would like to get SMS on or may be an email.

Maybe we need a platform to get all parties of the consumer ecosystem on the same place, may be a virtual marketplace if you like fancy terms …

Platform where all can co-exist, promote healthy and open competition and in the process have satisfied consumers.

Docall aims to do just that…Create a platform for all the buyers, seller, distributors, resellers all …welcome aboard!!!!