Is marketing still a numbers game?

"Marketing is much more of statistics than creativity. It's a numbers game." Yea, yea I admit it, I used this statement and, to be honest, believed in it.
On Aug 2009, after I got back from my maternity leave that lasted no more and no less but 1 year and 3 months (!!!), I realized that perhaps the rules have changed.
Don't get me wrong, I still think that statistics play a huge role in marketing success (and where not?!) but its' measurement metrics turned out to be a whole new story.
Everywhere I turn, I hear the same thing: "In today's world of 'social media' - It's all about quality, not quantity! It's all about research! You need to become an industry expert/consultant for you prospects, prior trying to sell them something! You need to show what value your company/solution/service can bring to the prospect's table!" yada-yada-yada... But what on earth did we do before the era of social media? Just sent our message to thousands, hundreds, millions of prospects with no research on their needs/challenges and what they can possibly be interested in? No, we did the research. We used focus groups. We differentiated our DB by certain criteria and adjusted the message to be a trigger for that particular group. And so on and so forth. I'm not trying to be provocative by saying what I've said. I want to understand. Basically, now, in this world of social media, we do the same things we did before, but we have better tools to reach the prospects. To be more specific: we have the tools to reach the prospects in the 'places' where they actually are and where they actually are more open (by default) to be engaged in the conversation, discussion etc. It's all good, but going back to the main question of this post: is marketing still a numbers game? I would say yes. Prospects, even if you think that becoming a sort of free consultant to them (and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, on the contrary!), understands very well that at some point they will be sold at.
Of course the effort is made by marketing team should be put on the scales vs. the ROMI, and the main challenge here is to make it at least an equation: effort=ROMI,or, and better, effort < ROMI (I can dream, can't I? ;-) ). I guess what I'm trying to say is that we still have to watch the numbers in terms of quantity. Naturally, this will take much more effort than ever to fill out a really good pipeline of quality prospects. But in this case I think that it will be worth it.
To finalize my thoughts: marketing has become more quality oriented than before. But in order to maintain the pipeline of quality prospects, the quantity should not be neglected. How this can be done? I think eventually it will come to the point that perhaps it’s better to have a small team of, say, marketing managers, who can think, rather than an army of telemarketers, who follow the script (The knowing will understand © )

By J.G.

Factors influencing technology evolvement in E-learning

A few months ago, I've started to research the subject. I'll skip for now the "why I started it" and move directly to the current bottom line of my research.
My first question was: what are the factors influencing the technology evolvement in E-learning in terms of software products. Meaning, what factors influencing e-learning software vendors and their software products?
This is the list I came up with based on my research:
1. M-learning
Mobile technologies have rapidly entered the E-learning industry market. /* off the record: according to the Ambient Insight report, in US the demand for m-learning packaged content is growing by 25.8%, the demand for m-learning services is growing by 36.2 %, and demand for m-learning technology is growing by 7.6% */

The need for M-Learning acroos the entire E-learning industry is constantly growing, as it is no longer considered (by far!) as a mean of delivering distance education on small form factor devices, or as E-learning “lite”. Comprehension of mobile learning benefits, from accessibility and portability, to collaboration options it provides, led to the new level of demand for E-learning software. Many vendors, offering software products for E-learning industry, have been porting their existing products and integrating new products to handhelds and mobile devices.


2. Addressing the needs of diverse learning styles and modal preferences
One of the most challenging aspects in creating E-learning software is the ability of the end-product to appeal to a variety of learning styles and modal preferences. It is evident, that the integration of contemporary technologies with interactive multimodal delivery has provided greater variety in the way that course content can be presented, and thus addressing a wider range of learning styles and modal preferences. As a result, the market demand for extended visual content of E-learning software is constantly growing.
The use of multimedia and hypermedia in software to be used in E-learning industry, along with the latest technology trends, has become almost crucial to the success of the products and services offered by software vendors, catering the sector.

3. Access to technology and resources
Inadequate infrastructure to support the technology has found to create significant barriers to technology adoption and integration, especially when it comes to the adoption of e-learning in the education and academic verticals. The lack of specialized technical support from instructional designers, technicians, graphic designers, media specialists, and librarians has been frequently cited as a reason for academics’ non-adoption of technology.
In order to overcome these barriers, software vendors are challenged to develop their products (regardless of the product complexity) to be as lite as possible, in terms of installation, usage, maintainability, accessibility, and management, along with ease and seamlessness of the technical support.

4. Integration with third-party applications
There are hardly any isolated applications that do not require the import and export of data from external systems. For E-learning software, it is an absolute requirement that information will appear ASAP in the database of Information Management System, or other system used. Various workers, such as librarians, teachers, administration, and of course students (this array is just an example) work with different systems in the scope of ther institute/corporation/firm etc... Most types of architecture for software products for E-learning industry now support even real-time integration with various external systems. Even if there is no integration needed in the current version, the next version of the software may require that. Possibility of synchronization with various Information Management Systems is a huge advantage for any system today, and it will be a must tomorrow.

5. The impact of standards
The impact of standards developed tremendously during the past decade, especially in education sector. For example: ten years ago, very few states had standards in history. Today, though, many teachers have history standards they are expected to teach, sometimes accompanied by high-stakes accountability tests. And while state standards and accountability systems influence the history classroom, many teachers would also cite the federal accountability system established by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as influencing K–12 history instruction. Strict demand for standard compliance force vendors to develop and design their products according to those standards.

The second question was: where the pedagogical aspects of E-learning implementation meet the technology daily "revolutions"? Is E-learning 2.0 (and up )) ) will be the answer to that one? Or, perhaps, semantic web could?

So, what do you think about the list of five?
Also it would be nice to get a feedback on the second question of my research )))

By J.G.

/* If you're a member of (E-)learning network Group on LinkedIn, you're welcome to comment on the discussion I've initiated there. Of the same name, naturally. */

Better late than never

Well, here I am. I've always wanted to create this challenging place.The place where I'll be able to see and analyze my challenges from aside, and perhaps to find the best way to resolve and/or address them. The most obvious here is that it will be job related and.... it's true. What can I say, my job has always been a challenging one.