Are Marketers Adapting to the Cloud’s Impact?

As more and more businesses and applications make the move to cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, it’s slowly changing the way businesses and individuals work, search, research, shop and compute in general.

According to a recent study conducted for The Economist, “Sixty‐nine percent of Americans connected to the web use some kind of ‘cloud service,’ including web‐based e‐mail or online data storage.” These changes in behavior and the accompanying changes in expectations require marketers to adapt the way they present information and run their services online.

Mobile on version 1.0

Many consumers of information are starting to lean heavily on their mobile devices as their primary research and reading tool. For marketers this means that mobile versions of services and sites need to be a consideration in the initial presentation and not a feature upgrade down the road.

RSS readers and conversion tools can do some of the lifting for basic information sites such as blogs, but marketers must be creating mobile‐friendly (read really small screen) versions of all information and mobile add‐ons and applications for all services.

No more lugging storage or power

Laptops, particularly the popular “netbooks,” rely increasingly on Internet based web applications and are intentionally stripped of power and storage capacity as the trade off for size and weight.

This means that marketing must be careful in the use of processor intense entertainment experiences and instead focus on simple presentations that can be viewed on 10‐inch monitors.

Where do the ads go?

Growing numbers of web applications are coming online as free or “fermium” offerings. Marketers of these services are finding increasing resistance to ad‐supported models.

However, web applications that deliver contextually relevant ads for products, services and information that supplement the primary offering should find greater acceptance as more editorial than interruption.

What’s the back­up plan?

The greatest friction to cloud computing and web application adoption is the notion of security and reliability. “If my data isn’t sitting on the corner of my desk in a pile of CDs, then how do I know who’s looking at it?”

Of course, the opposite is generally true, reputable storage and server facilities are often much more secure and reliable than the typical DIY platform, but it’s a perception that must be addressed.

Marketers can’t over do education in this arena and should probably consider offering back‐up, what if I can’t access my data, plans as part of their service offerings.

Gently adapting the changing demands and expectations of customers online is an ever-evolving communications and marketing challenge that’s better hit proactively than reactively.