Consumer Behaviour and What SEM’s Can Learn

Rather than digging into psycho-analytical consumer behaviour data that would leave the audience second guessing their marketing strategies, the panel discussed some practical thoughts that served to stimulate what we perhaps already knew.

A recurring theme in many of the conference sessions was brought up again in this one: keep content relevant and consider what customers want. Just because search is growing rapidly and because internet adoption is continuing to increase dramatically doesn’t mean that, as online marketers, we should throw everything on the wall. As session moderator Gary Stein of Jupiter Media said, just because you have a hammer, don’t treat everthing as a nail. 

The following question was asked to the panel: What was the single most dramatic change in the technology landscape in 2004 that will shape the search engine industry? The answers: Google desktop search; the battle of Google vs. MSN; and broadband adoption.

The panel agreed that marketers will need to spend more time gaining client information, rather than guessing, and will need to apply that knowledge through the channel available to them, whether it be rich media, enhanced search engine indexing, local search, mobile search etc.

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Word of Mouth Marketing Needs Clear Definition

Moderated by Edelman Catalyst Group Strategic Consultant Justin Zwiren, this session is the first of two AD:TECH session focused on word of mouth and viral marketing. The panel included VBMA Co-Founder and DMC CEO Justin Kirby, P & G Tremor CEO Steve Knox, New Media Strategies Founder and CEO Pete Snyder and BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter.

Zwiren began the session discussing how companies can listen to consumers to avert disaster through monitoring chats are reading weblogs. Much of the session centered on transparency – how much should be disclosed to the consumers in a word of mouth or viral marketing campaign. BzzAgent’s Balter said no cash should exchange hands when a word of mouth network is created by a marketer and it’s better to wait for consumers to join rather than actively recruit. DMC’s Kirby questioned whether transparency, if intended, is even possible. Mazda, which created a fake blog that was found out in fewer than two days caused Mazda to pull the site. Yet, BzzAgent’s Balter pleaded expressly to marketers in the room to be transparent in their viral efforts or the medium would be killed.