A January posting in IMedia Connection outlines 6 survival tips for digital media buying agencies. The article offers very strong and obvious pointers but what it fails to do is hit the core of the evolving marketplace and the future of online marketing.

The marketplace is fracturing  into two functions – strategy and execution and what is unique about digital advertising is that these functions have a near zero barrier to entry. Therefore almost anyone can become a digital strategist, and a digital marketing expert. For better or worse anyone can be a digital marketing consultancy. Agencies have the luxury of Brand, which is ironic since they are in the brand building business, and large companies will tend to gravitate to well seasoned professionals to execute their multi-million dollar campaigns.

However the best independent consultants will be the ones innovating at an exponentially faster pace. They will implement light, quick, and efficient technologies and plans for small and medium sized businesses. It is the small and medium sized business consultants that are going to be driving innovation in the space. Why? Money.

Small budgets demand innovation, and doing more with substantially less is what independent consultants do best. They are more likely to share ideas with each other, and participate in collective work because their client bases are so unique that fear of  client and idea poaching are secondary to producing results.

For large digital agencies to thrive they must shrink in terms of their mindset and embrace the grass roots to see what digital marketing is becoming. They need to not walk so tall as to loose perspective of what is happening right under their noses. Agencies should embrace the innovative bleeding edge. If not for implementation, for the value that lies in awareness and inspiration.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 8:13 am and is filed under Social Media, digital marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.