I've been thinking a lot lately on how the Internet is changing the concept of having control over your product or services; or even our marketing strategies.
We've talked about viral marketing recently and how it is an area that has a lot of potential along with risk. Here's a post by Dave Taylor on how he handled someone contacting him to promote one of their products if it was sent to him.
In referring to bloggers being contacted to review offerings for companies, he mentions that you need to answer this question: "If you seek visibility online, are you going to require positive reviews from bloggers, or are you truly capable of rolling those proverbial dice and sending out your product to either be evaluated, good or bad, or simply ignored or even immediately resold online?"
The first part of the question will obviously not do too much for a company if it's known that it's a bogus or an arranged review. The second part about rolling the dice is truer for today's online market. Marketers need to know that they no longer have control once they put something out on the Internet. It'll be remixed, changed, adapted, ignored, forwarded, or any number of things that can be done.
The point to remember is that once you put something out there, don't think there is any way to keep control of it. At this point in time, it is a role of the dice, as Dave says, and you need to be willing to roll those dice understanding that you don't know what will happen when you do.
Like Starbucks learned the other day; it can even be too successful. They lost total control and all they could do was shut it down.
It seems that marketing on the Internet can't be done with the expectation that we will be able to guide its path. Those days are now over.
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