Interesting opinion column in this week's New Media Age, by Neil Perkin, talking about how best use of the internet comes with thinking small. Unfortunately though we've been programmed by decades of thinking big.
I know what he means - there's a constant pressure to grow numbers, and to use these as measures of effectiveness. Get more website traffic, get more followers, get bigger audiences, email to bigger lists. If Facebook were a country, yada yada. But this is broadcast thinking. Old marketing.
As Perkin says, the web is a great opportunity to actually have personal, individual relationships with relevant prospects and customers where previously we could only serve up mass messages and hope that something would stick. Digital channels allow micro targeting on an impressive scale. Interestingly, I think, people are coming to expect it more and more - and with the blasé expectation of personalised messaging and customised offerings comes an increasing intolerance of mass messaging.
In a way, consumer marketing is becoming closer to business-to-business marketing, where it's so often about highly tailored messages and the development of long term relationships based on mutual trust.
Thinking about the web as a 'web of webs' reminds me of those photo-mosaics where it's possible to dwell on the big picture at the expense of missing the individual elements.
Thinking small, rather than big, is perhaps something we need to cultivate.
Photo from icanhascheezburger.com
