Más contenido relacionado How Search Marketing Is Morphing Into ZMOT Marketing Thought Paper2. 2
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Introduction
Confusion is when everyone can sense something is happening though no one can make sense of what
is happening.
On web, one will find endless commentaries surrounding and augmenting this confusion. So where
does the clutter end and message emerge.
With this “ZMOT Thought‐Paper” I am juxtaposing the currently visible pieces to give you a broad sense
of the emerging marketing landscape with special emphasis on search marketing. Whoever needs to be
“First to Future”will have to start looking beyond the horizon to anticipate “down the road scenery”.
So in this attempt to presage the future, perforce, I will be painting the scenery with broad brush
strokes. We will fill in the fine details, with time, as they become more visible.
So what the heck is happening?
In marketing world, what we are up to,is what Nicholas Nissam Taleb Calls a Black Swan (BS) event. A
black swan event is a statistician’s nightmare for it is a global event and changes the long term averages
of the attributes, unpredictably. The scenario after the black swan is dramatically different thanthe
circumstances leading to it. A statistician is happy with his world schema of bell curves, mean and
standard deviation and a prediction based on those and then comes an unpredictable massive black
swan, which turns this whole model upside down.
Examples of black swan (BS) events in other domainsare : Asteroid hitting earth 66m years ago (
biological evolution BS), printing press invention in 1439 by Gutenberg (human cultural evolution BS),
New York stock market crash of 1929 ( commercial BS), terrorist attacks of 9/11in New York ( warfare
and homeland security BS) . As you will notice some BS are immediate while some are temporally
stretched.
Marketing World seems to be pregnant with its own Black Swan.
It is anybody’s’ guess how long will the pregnancy last before the BS delivery finally happens. My
guess is that it should take anywhere between 2‐4 years for the entire sequence of events to play
out and the marketing black swan to land.
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So what is this MBS (Marketing Black Swan)?
Lets start talking about the MBS with a small tale. I am a great fan of Mughal King Akbar’s court jester,
Birbal, for his wit and his practical wisdom.
So as the episode goes, this once, Akbar challenged his courtiers, to make a line drawn on ground
smaller, without erasing it. Everybody was stumped. If you have to make a line smaller you obviously
have to temper it. Birbal thought for a while and then simply drew a bigger line next to the smaller one.
So given the context, the existing line became smaller.
I think with search marketing,that bigger line is getting drawn. Search is finding its context in the overall
marketing universe. It is integrating with other marketing activities that a company does.
This convergence will have major implications for both search as well as traditional
advertising/marketing for most companies. Nothing hereafter will exist in silos. It will be one big joint
convergent reality. Search will have to integrate with conventionalmarketing, as traditional marketers
will have to absorb search. The yin will become the yang as yang will flip back to being the yin. What
will emerge out of this elemental convergence is a new reality which marketers have yet not planned
for. That new reality will be the Marketing Black Swan (MBS)
Much like a chemical reaction, where two elements catalyze each other to produce an entirely new
compound (Na +2 Cl = NaCl2) , the new marketing equation looks like (Brand + Search + Sales+ CRM =
Convergent Marketing). This integrated marketing will be a unique beast with elements of all four of its
genetic parents.
To belabor this point, NaCl or common salt is a unique compound (with its unique taste and properties)
and is not separable into its constituents, Na and Cl. Likewise, an individual is a person with unique
attributes and is not reducible into his fathers or mothers genetic code. He is an emergent whole not
separable into his constituent parts. Similarly the newconvergence marketing will not be separable into
search or brand or sales constituents. It will be a unique integrated effort. Lets just call it ZMOT ( zero
moment of truth )Marketing.
So the counter for this MBS of Marketing elemental convergence is ZMOT marketing. I will be putting
out separate white papers on what exactly is ZMOT and the strategies for winning the ZMOT marketing
game from various perspectives, however the thrust of this thought paper is how will search be
effected by the MBS of convergence.
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20 variables from your geography and other local efforts.
50 variables from your content authority.
25 variables from your dissemination authority
25 variables from your site analytics and technical features.
This is Google’s’ algorithmic version of the oncoming convergence or the marketing black swan.
Lets pause to examine some of the implications of this for businesses who employ search
marketing:
You will not be good in search marketing if you are not good in your, brand
engagement efforts (positioning, brand loyalty) for you are un‐optimized on 30
variables.
You will be un‐optimized for 50 variables if your social media marketing does not
engage or attract, reviews, likes, followers.
You will not rank for non‐branded keywords if you are not good with your overall sales.
They are factoring in the site bounce rate, shopping cart abandonment, as some of the
ranking signals as your 25 variables based on site analytics. These are clearly down‐line
sales funnel signals and suggest entire online sales funnel integration into the ranking
metric.
4) Apart from getting a wider footprint, with the 200+ ranking variables, these variables are also
getting interlinked (Correlated) in new ways. This new inter‐relations will make them
qualitatively better as ranking signals and hence difficult to spam.What this means is that these
variables are no longer stand alone variables but will exist in sets. You cannot optimize them
individually but you will have to optimize the entire set.
For example one set might have five signals from one algo category(content), two from another
algo category(citation), seven from another algo category( social media). Now there are
hundreds of ways of defining these sets and also there can be hundreds of sets. Think 200 C n (
as was taught in college probability class) as a possibility.
These sets are not static but will be generated on the fly. The particular dynamic set
permutations that will be runwill depend on which part of fragmented algo is running for which
query. A semantic algo will create different settopology from these 200+ variables than the set
selection of a local search query. So the same data of 200+variables will be analyzed in different
ways depending on the context.
Some of the new emerging co‐relates in this scenario are:
Content quality is being linked to author reputation.
Citation score (off page) is getting co‐related between link pop and buzz pop.
Keyword focus (in url, anchor, navigation) is being linked to spam.
So points 3& 4 put together suggest that overall, the 200+ ranking variables are getting re‐
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In Conclusion
All this means that the divide between search companies and traditional marketing companies will
disappear in future and their activities will converge. Every marketing company will have to make a play
for the ZMOT. The early bird prize for ZMOT marketing is however still available. In ZMOT marketing,
unlike social get togethers, you would actually want to be the first person who reaches the party.
As for the business and their marketers, the black swan of convergence means, that each marketing
piece of their business, be it brand, search, social, POS, CRM is getting tied up with one string and will
get subsumed into one emergent reality at the ZMOT. That’s their defining moment of truth.
How to win the ZMOT is a billion dollar question for businesses and marketers. Only, openness to
learning, crafting smart strategiesand timewill answer that for us.
About Media Mosaic
Media Mosaic(2M) is an Integrated ZMOT ( Zero Moment Of Truth) agency, specializing in creating
unique campaigns, to help you WIN@ZMOT.
When you hire us as your online marketing agency, we bring an extensive knowledge of buyer
demographics and their buying behaviors. This helps us to strategize your online marketing campaign
for maximal ROI. We achieve the defined objectives, by mounting research based and interlocking,
Branding, Content, Search and Social Media marketing activities. Contact us for a free “WIN@ZMOT
with 2M” campaign consultation today.