The Opportunity Engine

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The Opportunity Engine:

When Prof. Kagan asked the class, if anyone is not on Facebook, I was the only one to put my hand up. I was completely surprised. I definitely expected at least a few more people to not be on Facebook. For years, I have resisted years of peer pressure to join Facebook. I have heard a range of emotional and business cases in favor of joining Facebook, but I whenever I did a cost-benefit analysis, I could not convince myself that the benefits outweighed the cost. My primary concern all along was the amount of unproductive time that people spent on Facebook. I just was not sure of my ability to resist the wide range of temptations and distractions offered by Facebook. Besides, I also liked the fact that my street cred was up among my peers because I was one of the few cool people who resisted Facebook.

Well, that was before I sat in my first Digital Marketing Strategy class. At the end of the first lecture, I realized how limited my understanding of the potential of digital marketing was and what an exciting industry it is shaping up to be. The second lecture on Search and reading “The Search” by John Battelle reinforced this belief further. I realize now that Facebook because it is a channel of Digital Marketing is something that’s unavoidable as a business tool and I now feel that I have to be on it.

What excites me the most about Digital Marketing and its several channels, particularly search, is its potential to identify actionable “hot leads” in a cost effective manner. Fifteen years ago, I used to be in direct sales and sold cellphones in India. That experience helped me to understand the value of a quality lead and usually only one in thirty leads turn out to be a good lead. Successful sales professionals are able to identify hot leads faster than their competitors and optimize their efforts. Sales professionals spend extra-ordinary amounts of their time trying to zero in on the “intention” of the potential customer. Sales strategies were based on intuition and experience and not very scientific. How can I know more about the customer I am about to meet? Is this customer really interested in buying my product? How can I convince this customer that my product provides more value than my competitor’s? Before Digital Marketing techniques were widely adapted as they are today, sales professionals had to rely on intuition to answers these questions, which are important to get them close to a sale.

However, Search has turned the whole game on its head by providing businesses with an endless supply of the “clickstream of intentions”, to borrow a term from Battelle, and helps businesses immensely in developing a sales strategy that is more targeted and scientific.  What is even more exciting is the fact that Search is just one of the many channels of digital marketing and the whole industry possess unlimited potential to change the course of marketing and how businesses interact with their customers. I am grateful that the course has already shifted my paradigm in a meaningful way and I now look at Google not just as a search engine, but also as an opportunity engine.