I think it’s important for us to get a clear understanding of the playing field as it relates to digital marketing today in order to prepare for the challenges we most definitely will face tomorrow. My hope is to provide context for the ideas and direction EMG is heading.

I begin with a few questions that I ask myself every day.

What ideas should we lead with? – The one’s with the best or most compelling creative, relevant strategy, newest technology, most popular or that shows the most promising return on investment? Is it all of the above or something much more complex, integrated and visceral?

How do we measure or benchmark success? Monetize social media? Break through barriers? How do we adapt faster and test quicker? Who are we influenced by? Who do we want to influence?

We now know that digital marketing can at times become the single backbone to success or failure – that it is no longer for simply marketing to youth, Millennials and soccer moms.

We have a continuous flood of information and intelligence resources to help us monitor, uncover and identify common campaign curses, unforeseen pitfalls, potential market penetration opportunities, unique engagement challenges, unconventional strategies and user experience best-practices.

Thought Leaders, must now work together to quickly take advantage of the ever changing digital landscape in order to continue to meet and surpass audience expectations; to not become stale; to determine what to embrace and what to ignore.

Digital marketing has now moved well beyond its infancy of simple electronic press kit sites and landing pages, search marketing, widgets, apps, online promotions and mobile contests, display advertising and even alternate reality games.

Think about the ground-breaking campaigns that are showing success with non-competing partnerships; campaigns that are reaching unbeknownst audiences via aggregated and unique content, popularity rankings, social evangelism and innovative creative; that are creating a personalized story and connection with our audiences outside the boundaries of the previous conventional digital campaign.

How much risk do we take, however?

Regardless of the complexity, all of our goals are singular, simple and historical. Identify the audience, both the core and the fringe, find the best way of delivering our content to them, learn from our success and failures, and risk just enough to stand out and be different.