Internet is now! That was the message at the Digital Marketing Summit 2012. Social media hasfundamentally changed the way we communicate. That’s what presenters kept stating, showing,explaining. Message heard loud and clear!

The Digital Marketing Summit was an excellent platform for communication and marketing teams ofdifferent leading organizations, corporations and even start ups to present the new and innovativeproducts and services they were offering and how they were marketing themselves in the new worldorder of social media and digital marketing. It was refreshing to see young managers providing insightson their strategies, their lessons learnt and most of all, the impact so far in applying digital methods todo their marketing in a country which still has a relatively nascent internet base.

Maya.com.bd had the opportunity to present at the Summit on the women internet users and how toreach to them with specific products and services. The presentation was the only one that focused onwomen as an important segment of the society who directly and indirectly influence the expendituresof the households, irrespective of socio-economic status. While marketers target women for variousconsumer goods, they also have very little aggregate data on women’s presence in social networks andthe virtual world in general. The Maya presentation provided information on the number of searchesthat are made every month on just pregnancy issues that are redirected to external websites and aresupported by foreign ads and information that have no relevance to the women of Bangladesh.

The Maya team also explained the growing number of women from Bangladesh in the virtual world,sharing and networking and thriving in this new found space. To bring ads to their Facebook pages oron the sites they visit the most, would be to bring information to their spaces of comfort. While womenare targeted for several products, the question still remained how much of the existing brands and theirmarketing strategies focused on women?

The presentation was highly appreciated by the audience who were mainly practitioners/marketersespecially on the segment on the Maya story. The website and its page views of over one millionpositioned the Maya story as a best practice in terms of understanding demands and catering tothe needs in a local context with global standard contents. The personal side to the Maya story wasalso well received because both men and women were able to equally identify the ups and downs ofpregnancy and the different kinds of products and services that every parent look for in the anticipationof their new arrival. Maya also showed the participants at the Summit that women are effectiveconsumers both on and offline. They do hold the strings to the purse (and the wallets!) and it isimportant to strategize specifically towards women at all fronts – the on and offline social settings, thephysical and virtual displays and the searchable options that are available to them both on and offline.