A shorter version of this post originally appeared in Dr. Ian Fenwick’s digimarketing column in the Bangkok Post, April 29, 2009

Looking at differences between digimarketing (digital marketing) and traditional marketing, we’ve seen that digital devices are unique: allowing marketers unparalleled ability to track and personalize. We’ve seen that the new digital media model allows anyone to create content—and potentially take it global. Audiences aren’t just bought: like super-bowl commercials. Audiences can be earned: like the Thai kids dancing and lip-syncing in this YouTube video, http://ow.ly/6ze9, already viewed over 1.2 million times. Anyone can earn an audience, if their content is sufficiently relevant and intriguing.

Traditional marketing has held that the first thing marketers must do is choose their target market. What a revealing term. A target is a passive thing, at which projectiles—or, in the case of marketing, messages—are fired. The target does nothing! The target simply absorbs whatever is sent its way. Consumers in front of their TVs might change the channel, or remember an advertising message, or perhaps call a 1-800 number. Reading an ad in a newspaper, targets might take the trouble to clip a coupon. But that’s about all. Traditional target marketing was well-designed for the “couch potato”.

Even the early days of the web allowed little participation. Web-surfers clicked on links, read stuff, then clicked and read again. Maybe occasionally they filled out forms or submitted credit card details.

No more! Today’s web and today’s digital marketing are based around active, involved, participative consumers. Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the digital revolution through which we are living, is this release of pent-up participation by consumers. The couch potatoes have sprouted! No longer content as passive targets, they want to make their mark.

Consumers making their mark can be as simple as tagging photos on social networks. Consumers take time to add descriptive words to pictures someone has posted. Or they might add comments to an article someone has written. Or they might upload their own pictures, or their own videos. Or write articles, or entire blogs; or write reviews of products they’ve bought.

All this consumer participation is a little scary for traditional marketers. Control slips from the marketer to the market. Consumers get the chance to answer back! Traditional marketing sharply separated marketing and market research. Marketing was what we did to them: messages delivered at targets via public media. Market research was the feedback from consumers, delivered in private and rarely publicized. After all if consumers commented on our products in public: they might say bad things!

Forward-looking, digital, marketers realize that encouraging consumers to comment and to participate is in fact excellent marketing. If we can entice consumers to participate on our website, they linger longer: a factor once called stickiness. As consumers become more involved with our site—and with its brands—they have less time for, and less involvement, with competitors’ sites and brands.

What’s more, Rubicon Consulting has found that on-line reviews by other consumers, are the #2 driver of purchase decisions: second only to personal advice of friends. Consumers contributing (and paying attention to) on-line reviews, ratings, and comments about personal experiences is becoming a marketing phenomenon known as social commerce. It’s bringing the banter of a village market to the global stage.

Still some marketers fear consumers’ negative comments. Well, Bazaarvoice (a company that provides websites with social commerce capabilities) reports that across all its clients, four and five-star reviews outnumber one and two-star ratings by seven to one. Most customers who take the trouble to participate do it because they had good experiences.

In any event, marketers don’t have much choice! We may fear consumer participation, but we have to get used to it. It’s not going away. Successful marketers are carefully monitoring consumers on-line comments; and intervening where necessary to thank, or to apologize, or to gently correct misinformation or product misuse. There are a range of monitoring tools: almost all have free, or free trial, versions. A simple place to start is the free Google Alerts.

Marketers need to purge “target market” from their vocabularies. The words we use have a nasty habit of affecting our thoughts and our actions. Let’s stop thinking targets, and start thinking participants.

Dr. Ian Fenwick is a Founding Partner of digiAindra Co. Ltd., and an Advisor at Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration, Bangkok, Thailand. He recently co-authored DigiMarketing: The Essential Guide to New Media & Digital Marketing (Wiley 2008). Become a DigiAindra fan, follow Ian on Twitter, or see his SlideShows presentations.

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