Interactive Marketing is EVERYWHERE

I just finished taking my first class at Georgetown and I have to admit it was pretty amazing. I didn't know what to expect in my interactive marketing class because I wasn't sure what "interactive marketing" really was. Come to find out, not only does my work in social media fall into the category of interactive marketing, but it something that touches all of our lives on a daily basis.

The internet has revolutionized the way we communicate, how businesses reach out to each other and consumers. These days anyone can be an information news source and making plans over social media outlets is the norm. I've heard of concepts like pay per click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), social media, mobility, email etc. But I never understood how many of those concepts fell into the grand scheme of communicating a message to a particular audience.

The biggest thing I learned from my interactive marketing class is that research is pivotal to the success of an interactive marketing campaign. Understanding why your audience wants a particular good or service is one thing, but understanding how they search and locate the information they need is vital.

Keywords and terms can make or break a companies ability to market themselves. Even today, Facebook and timelines.com are going head to head because timelines.com is scared that the "Facebook timeline" will destroy their business. In the past, I would look at a story like that and just say why all the fuss? But it's a major deal when you understand the power of search terms and words associated with a brand. If Facebook does succeed with the usage of the world "timeline" it will have a significant impact on the timelines.com brand. It will affect search results, social media metrics and even their ability to reach consumers.

In the field of work that I do within the nonprofit sector, I believe it would be good to use a lot of the email concepts I learned in class like understanding how people respond to the from and subject lines. I do it all the time, I ignore unfamiliar emails, frequently deleting emails that I signed up for because they end up sending an excessive amount of irrelevant emails otherwise known to many of us as spam.

Nonprofits do a lot of email marketing not only to share information, but to fundraise, encourage a call to action, e-commerce, etc. Social media is also a great tool in the nonprofit sector. Understanding how to cultivate and sustain an audience on the web is crucial. What you do on Facebook does not easily translate on twitter considering there is a 140 character limit.

Overall I'm glad I took this class, it broadened my perspective as a communications professional and now I know that a lot of my work involves interactive marketing. Whether you like it or not, interactive marketing is everywhere and considering that budgets for digital communications are increases across all sectors it's safe to say that it's here to stay.

MB