I was having a conversation with our CTO today, Marty Harris and he made a comment that really elucidated something very interesting about marketing and internet searching…
Anyone who’s tried to self-diagnose a problem, either physical, or otherwise has had the problem of trying to locate information about that problem on the internet. Typically specialized language becomes the problem. Doctors, for instance have their own cohort of language. It’s specialized and unique and it’s superficial in that it describes something that’s usually understood in common language, yet only discussed in the specialized language in conversation. Afterall, while everyone totally understands what you mean when you say, “you know that thing where your head hurts when you see light”, we typically refer to that as a migraine.
But, what if you didn’t know the word migraine and you could only relate the experience?
As a researcher, you have two options. Search until you can find the specialized language or give up. This is where things get interesting. One of the neat novelties of the internet is that all of the specialized language is already out there, the missing component is simply our apprehension of it; like a locker combination. Once the combination is known, entry is simply a matter of opportunity intersecting desire. And then, it occurred to me; “what if someone could package that ‘combination’ for any topic, company or person as a means of locating and ranking information for the end of effective marketing – what would that look like?”
It would look like a librarian, who, with a little context can point you in the right direction and help you find what you’re looking for.
Apply this to the internet and what we need as marketing professionals is a system to collect, analyze and distill a data-set that is contextually relevant to itself. As marketing professionals we tend to think in terms of the offer, or the value of the offer. We often do not think in terms of the needs, location, or interests of the client we’re trying to market to…as I always say, you either have an exposure or a value problem. Sorting people, topics and companies on this basis provides that exact contextual relevance and the obvious benefit becomes marketing to and where the people who are already interested in our message actually live.
It’s this exact type of thinking that is driving our product development discussions…my question is, what would you do with that information if you had it?
