Digital marketing - what is being said about your products?

Back in the 1990s the term 'new media' was spoken about in advertising agencies to describe creative work that typically ended up on CDs rather than in print. Today the term 'digital marketing' is more commonly in vogue. Digital marketing is used to describe the use of content delivery via social media to some form of computing platform, mobile device or smart phone. Interestingly it is creatives  who have coined the terms rather than engineers. Engineers would more likely consider 'digital' as an alternative to 'analogue'.

It is not just terminology but the whole mindset associated with digital marketing right from creation to consumption and subsequent analysis that is changing. I  have visited a few digital agencies in the last few months which still  make a nod to the minimalist decor of the traditional advertising agency plus what appears to be a nursery playroom in one - for the young code writers perhaps. Then at the other end of the process there are the analytics providers. Well it isn't just analytics but aggregation of what is happening out in this digital landscape that is talking about your brand or product. It is not merely response to what you or your company put out and have some type of control over, but conversations about your stuff between users who don't include anyone from your company at all. And it is not just about looking at numbers as with say Google Analytics, but tapping into conversations which might be ill informed and harmful to the brand. So you need to know what they are saying.

Some pretty smart software helps company marketers get some handle on what is  going on out there by aggregating news, chat, comments and reviews - even down to identifying requests for information from potential prospects. Options to join in a number of global conversations allow relevant content to be re-tweeted or posted to other social media channels and no doubt negative comment responded to positively. It offers real time interaction, but did the typical b-2-b marketer expect this is where digital marketing might go and are they set up for instant content creation?