Yesterday I attended a terrific MITX (Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange/MITX.org) panel event on what to expect in the digital marketing arena in the next six months. the panelists included:

Jon Chait - Partner, Dace Ventures;
Kristin Marlow - Client Partner, Razorfish;
Hadley Stern - Vice President, Fidelity Labs;
Shar VanBoskirk - Vice President & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc.

Each had a strong point-of-view and a distinct approach. Together they gave an interesting, broad brush of the digital terrain.

Chait was particularly persuasive. His main point was that digital marketing is now a two-way communication tool. Simply delivering your desired message via digital tools without allowing the consumer to respond not only misses an opportunity to get valuable feedback but can annoy the consumer who is now expecting to participate in a digital relationship. If you don't give them this opportunity you will piss them off. Of course, this is a difficult change. It requires a leap of faith by the marketer since they are in essence giving a certain amount of control over the conversation and the campaign to the consumer. They may take it in a direction that the marketer didn't expect. He suggested that marketers must become "conversation stewards" who facilitate the conversation rather than simply force a message through a pipeline. He gave some examples of a major foreign auto maker who had expected their new models to appeal to specific segments but found via digital tools that the consumers had other ideas and they used this digital feedback loop to revise their marketing campaigns to reach the markets who were actually interested in specific car models. This shows, Chait noted, that segmentation happens continually and is trackable. You've got to follow consumers as they change. He suggested that it is advantageous to use the same platform to deliver and to measure the digital response since the rapid pace of social marketing iteration and campaign management favors integrated measurement solutions. He wishes there were better open platforms and cost effective solutions for multi-source social marketing anaytics but currently we've observed how integrated platforms have been a preferred solution for customers. He stressed it is important to have very specific and well-thought-out goals and then to use time of engagement, depth of interaction (2nd click throughs) and demographic activation to evaluate the digital campaigns. He suggested some interesting vendors including Vitrue.

Marlow pointed out that many businesses expect that social networking should be a no-cost or "free" marketing option but obviously it is not. She agreed with Chait and said that marketers must be influencers without actually owning the transaction. Metrics are difficult and she stressed that the data achieved through digital tools should be treated as "leads" and the marketer must use them as such and market directly to these leads. She also noted that Razorfish has had a number of companies asking them to help rationalize their various digital syndicates, balance the organizing message while allowing an organic relationship with customers. The problem many companies face is that different groups or individuals have undertaken different digital tools and the messages coming from Facebook or from Twitter may not be coordinated. Of course, you don't want to overly control the messaging but they should definitely not be working at cross purposes. She likens the various digital players (both within and outside the companies) as a sort of "franchise" of the message. Very helpful simile. Some vendors she recommends are Six Part and Federated Media.

Stern says his role at Fidelity is to help the company know where digital users will be six months down the road so that the company can make sure that they are helping to secure and improve the brand in whatever new channels might arise. Right now he seems to be very into non Fidelity website based desktop widgets and gadgets on XP, Vista and Yahoo. Meaningful interactions on other websites (other than Fidelity) are a key to success in the coming 18 months. Use of these widgets are trackable (source of traffic, widget downloads, activation, types of activation) and are often on the consumers laptop dashboard so the brand is a constant presence.

VanBoskirk moderated and kept the conversation going. The first question of the morning was about a Forrester Research paper released Tuesday about 5 media in 5 years. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to locate it but will look and post if I can find it later. VanBoskirk also stressed that platforms should "plug-in" to the companies' digital tools (or vice versa).