Standing still is not an option when it come to a digital marketing.

The constant change in the environment means that businesses need to be innovative in order to stay in line with the needs of their consumers.  All businesses need to become “Future focused” in order to maintain market share or grow.

Recent talks within the industry about the future of Digital Marketing Strategy have centered a lot less around new technology and more on the importance of culture, philosophy and strategy.  The philosophy for any business is to look at their consumer needs, culturally businesses are dealing with two extremes of either creative or engineering driven.

Strategically we can learn from the “Vertical stack” of Mega companies including Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, which can be broken down into 7 layers:

1. Hardware – Google’s Chromebook,, Apple, Amazon Kindle Fire.

2. Operating system – Apple IOS, Google Android, Facebook as the Social OS

3. Content (Platforms/Distribution/Streaming/Cloud) – Amazon Web Services and Kindle publishing, Apple iTunes and iCloud, Facebook content streaming, and YouTube.

4. Access (Apps and Browsers) – Chrome, Facebook mobile app, the Apple, Facebook and Android App ecosystem.

5. Payment ecosystems – Google checkout, Wallet and Android Market, Apple iTunes, Amazon Payments, and Facebook Credits.

6. Context – location aware (Google, Facebook, Apple), sharing and social graph aware (Google+, Facebook), identity aware (Facebook Connect, Google log-in, Amazon tracking, iTunes), personalisation and recommendation (Amazon), advertising (Facebook, Google)

7. Messaging – Apple’s Facetime and iMessage, Google+ hangouts, Gmail chat, Facebook Messenger and Skype integration

While each has come from different elements; Google from access, Apple from devices, Facebook from a social platform and Amazon from commerce, as organisations they are all attempting the same thing.  They all want to obtain a slice from the multiple layers of the “stack” which will result in consumer advocacy.

Xcite can help to achieve this with providing you with a creative marketing campaign catered around you and your customers needs.

  Reference: http://neilperkin.typepad.com/only_dead_fish/2011/11/the-vertical-stack.html