Thinking Beyond Audience for New Marketing

By Ric Dragon

In reviewing the winners of one national marketing awards list, and was stopped dead in my tracks by the term “audience”. “That’s right”, I remembered… in marketing, particularly traditional marketing, we think of people in terms of “audience”, passive receptors for whatever we might sling their way. In web marketing, we think of people as “users”.

Now, some people have criticized the term “user” as being cold and abstract, but at least it connotes activity. The whole idea of “user” comes from the software and interface design world, and after all, the web is fundamentally software. I’ve seen the term “actor” used, but somehow it suggests a bit of insincerity on the part of the …uhm, user, “Constituent” might be kindest term of all, but what a mouthful!

Whatever term we settle on (and for the sake of this article, I’m going to stick with “user”), there could be real advantages to reconsidering how we view the people that we wish to become more familiar with our products or services. All of the various new technologies that have proliferated on the web in the past couple of years really bring a spotlight on this issue. If we want to leverage social networking, viral marketing, and community building, we have to understand that in marketing, we are only one part of the transaction.

There are some new ways of doing things

There are a series of technologies and attitudes that are taking hold on the web, and all together, web pundits are referring to them as “Web 2.0”. While there is disagreement on which technologies belong or not, seen outside the fray one thing is apparent: things are changing.

A list of some of these technologies follows, but for the sake of brevity, I’m not going to go into detail. If you want to know more about any one of them, you might try Wikipedia (which by the way, is a Wiki, on of the technologies).
• Blogs – an online journal, usually syndicated – meaning it can be viewed on other websites.
• RSS – a simple way of publishing or syndicating blogs, podcasts, and other information so that they can be read by someone using an “aggregator”
• Podcasts – audio files published on the internet using syndication
• Wiki – Website where users can add, edit, or delete content. (sounds crazy, I know, but it works)
• Social Networking – Think “MySpace”, or “YouTube”, or countless other sites. Social Networking on the web is where the participants are communicating with one another.
• AJAX – a way for a webpage to post information back to the server, and then back to the webpage without having to reload the page, creating a smoother experience

Now other than the AJAX, all of the items listed above suggest that we’re not dealing with an “audience”. If anything, we who are doing the marketing and building the websites are the audience. The “users” are in control, creating and sharing content.

Savvy marketers are harnessing this energy to help market their products and services. Choosing a top product site at random, I pulled up coca-cola.com . Sure enough, the major calls-to-action on the front page (after choosing your country) were actions that requested users’ participation, “Submit and Entry” or “Vote for your Favorites”. There are still countless vertical markets of products and services, however, which are still only being presented to their audiences.

In many industries there is a fear, often justified, that letting the audience in to become a user could open the organization to risk, even liability and the big “L” word, LITIGATION. But there are always ways to solve the problems and the issues, as long as the marketing team is focused on the concept. The products and the industry verticals that embrace these concepts are going to build communities, and the communities that are built first and best are going to be difficult to best in the competitive market.