The new thinking on the website front is to allow free access to all thought leadership material on your website to visitors – we listened to David Meerman Scott expand on this during NILF 2010. His logic is that by adding filters such as forms etc, you are making it more difficult for the visitor to return to your site. He suggests throwing the old pattern of forms to capture visitor details out of the window. Good advice.

How will this work?  Sure, if a visitor finds enough interesting and relevant material on your site, he/she is bound to return to check out new stuff. By sending out regular updates on what’s new on your website, you can get enough loyal visitors. The idea is to impress the visitor with appropriate information and convert it to a lead hopefully.

You can address the danger of sharing information freely with competition by having only documents such as whitepapers case studies, articles etc.  So, in effect you are creating a pull effect for your visitors which will be more sustaining in the long term.

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David Meerman Scott, author of the highly successful book “New rules of Marketing and PR” asks the audience the following 5 questions to kick off his workshop anywhere in the world:

1. How many people used direct mailers that came through snail mail to check out new products? 

2. How many people used the yellow pages to find out about a new product

3. How many people used ads and magazines to do a product search

4. How many used internet search?

5. How many used an e-mail or other internet based social networking tools to check with a friend on a new product?

Interestingly, the pattern of responses to the above questions is uncannily similar across the world. The response to the first 3 questions is pretty lukewarm- between 0 and 15% while 4 typically scores close to a 100% and 5 gets a 60-80%.

The point is that the internet has irreversibly altered the rules of marketing. However, decision makers are yet to come to terms with the impact of the web completely and hence are still “clinging on” to old habits.

He also adds that today, much of the research on the web is done by decision makers themselves, and not delegated, as is the commonly held belief and hence more power to online methods.

David says that it is no longer necessary to buy (ads) or beg (PR), bug (sales route) for attention; today it is highly feasible to earn attention.

David’s arguments are lucid and he provides diverse examples both from B2C and B2B contexts of how online marketing has worked. At the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum recently, where David conducted his workshop and delivered a talk, he convinced all of us on the merits of carrying through whole heartedly with an online  strategy.

Also check out my blog at http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/blog/2010/02/new-rules-of-marketing-pr/

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Having spent 2 days at NILF 2010, I see a more optimistic mood among attendees compared to last year. Companies are seeing the market opening up and there were even allegations that the downturn was hyped up and news on the turnaround was a media opportunity. All in all, 2010 looks to be more promising.

On the sessions front, there were some really good ones. I attended a workshop on Building a learning organization by David Garvin, Prof at HBS and found this very interesting. Will share some of that in a separate post. Another one was by Lynda Gratton from LBS – she was talking about how we need to gear up for the changes in the work environment.  Another good session had Rajiv Bajaj, Chandra of TCS and Paul Hermelin (Group CEO of Capgemini). Rajiv Bajaj had valuable and different perspectives and it is good to bring in people outside the IT industry to share their views – we can learn a lot from other industries for sure.

I notice a lot of country delegations this year including from Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Germany etc – their objective is to make companies aware of the possibilities and invite investments. This is another indicator to be noted.

Finally, Ray Bingham, partner at General Atlantic shared his  perspectives on building a great business. He made a point on Level 5 leadership (refer to Jim Collins’ book – Good to Great). Level 5 leaders are those who get their job quietly done and shun  publicity/attention etc – he gave the example of Mark Hurd and Larry Ellison. Ellison while definitely not a level 5 leader apparently is surrounded by a set of Level 5 leaders who get the job done. Similarly for Apple’s Steve Jobs – the company performed very well when he was sick and away. Something to think about.

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NILF 2010, the 18th edition of NASSCOM’s flagship event begins in Mumbai tomorrow. Prayag is a silver sponsor and that’s not all. Anita and I are among the official bloggers for the event. So do check out our real time updates at http://indialeadershipforum.nasscom.in/blog/2010/02/nilf-2010-beckoning/

The event has an interesting agenda, some good speakers and a few new additions to the format, like the Masterclass workshops. I hear that there is a record delegate registration this year- this signals I hope, the recovery in the industry, which we at Prayag are also seeing definite signs of, in the last 2 months.

Three of us from Prayag will be at NILF. So, do check out this and the NILF blog for regular updates.

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