As I mentioned in my last post, it seems like the relative newcomers to the content game have some advantages in bringing new ideas to market, assuming they wisely leverage “2.0” tech without abandoning good old fashioned business planning. Yet this is not the time for companies of any size or longevity to cease innovating. As John Girard Founder & CEO of Clickability puts it, “When you combine what is going on from an economic standpoint with the rapidly accelerating pace of change, you have a conundrum: You can’t really spend a lot, but if you don’t invest to try new things, you can quickly fall behind.”

John Girard Founder & CEO, Clickability

The temptation, of course, is to hunker down, cut costs and try to ride out the storm, but the next big thing might blow right by you in along the way. So how do you make sure you don’t miss out on the next big thing? John suggests “finding ways to experiment cheaply, then really back your winners.” He believes “in an evolutionary process in business through which you spend as little time and money to put thought experiments out there…and the ones that get responses, you then expand on.”

While he plans to provide examples from the content market as a whole in his BSeC talk “Future Proof Your Business,” he gave me one from his own sales and marketing efforts: “On the marketing side, we tried all kinds of ideas to get leads. One was our iPod campaign, in which we sent headphones to about 10 CIOs & CTOs and said, ‘if you take a meeting with us, we will bring the iPod.’ By spending a small amount of money, we were able to test the idea and measure or costs and the return. Then we tried it with 50 CIOs and CTOs… the hit rate was 30 to 40 percent.”

Ultimately, he admits that, “Figuring out what things apply to our business is tricky, but luckily there are a lot of people out there experimenting and many are willing to share their ideas so we can figure out what works.” Amazing that this will be John’s first time at our show, because that is exactly what BSeC is all about.