Understand Consumer Behavior / videos
It’s an adage as old as the advertising industry itself: know your customer. Digital media gives marketing professionals extraordinary new tools for acquiring detailed information about and reaching consumers. But the proliferation of new media also raises our curiosity. What are consumers’ general media habits like? How do they toggle between online and offline? Is your customer more impulsive or thoughtful?
Here at Think Insights with Google, we're curious about all these human behaviors too. Lucky for you, we've done all the heavy lifting. You can find something about your consumer here, across virtually every media platform and most major industries. So go ahead, get to know your customer.
Editor's Pick
Relevant Moments
Kara Segreto, Head of Marketing for Prudential Retirement Services, discusses the proliferation of marketing touch points. She argues that reaching customers at moments in which your brand may be highly relevant to their lives is more efficient than flooding them with constant information.
Editor's Pick
Use All Channels
Tom Kelly, VP of Corporate Internet Marketing at New York Life, points out that as customers are more digitally-savvy, his company must make itself accessible through multiple channels. With insurance, normal contact points are only a few per year, so to maintain a relationship with customers his company must provide value and maintain presence through useful and visible methods such as providing information.
Insight & Revelation
Rob Brosnan, Senior Director of Strategic Marketing at Seton Hall University, explains that, before digital channels, his organization relied on live events to gain feedback. Now, customer response is more forthcoming. With social, he found that questions such as "what is the grossest thing you ever ate?", though off-message, were very effective in opening a useful dialogue with potential students.
Editor's Pick
Paradigms of Listening
Todd Watson, eRelationship Manager at IBM, advises marketers to constantly monitor the marketplace. Be selective and try to follow thought leaders and evangelists. Listen closely to your own customers.
Connecting Core Values to Consumers
Jon Kamen, Chairman & CEO of Radical Media and Board Member of the Future of Advertising Project with Wharton, shares how brands are beginning to realize that being meaningful in people's lives means supporting things that people care about, often through social responsibility. By successfully integrating mobile and apps in this way, brands can create even greater brand loyalty.
Editor's Pick
Customers Need Answers
Joshua Palau, VP Search Engine Marketing at Razorfish, explains that health marketing should provide useful information. For example, if a person performs a search as the result of a diagnosis, the first thing they receive should not be a sales pitch. The first thing they should receive is an answer to their question.
Editor's Pick
Vocabulary for Health
Robert Brown, CMO of Eli Lilly and Co., says that health advertising is helpful because sometimes people don't have the vocabulary to communicate what is going on with their health. Advertising can help focus awareness and expedite the conversation between a patient and doctor.
Editor's Pick
Consumer Testimonials
Liz Cahill, VP of Marketing for Lee Jeans, discusses a recent trend that uses consumer testimonials. Marketers have to be careful not to cross the line into overproduced and inauthentic. Consumers will know if actors are being used.
Editor's Pick
Consumers Lead Digital
Barry Wacksman, Chief Growth Officer of R/GA, believes that with the exception of Apple, most marketers are being led by the consumer. This is the opposite of the analog age, when advertisers effectively used television to drive consumption.
Editor's Pick
Kindness & Empathy
John Gerzema, , Chief Insights Officer at Young & Rubicam, describes the most surprising recent change in consumer behavior as a shift toward kindness and empathy. Consumers want companies to understand them. Bank of America's "Keep the Change" and Hyundai's "Buyer Reassurance Program" are the sorts of gestures that consumers are looking for.
Editor's Pick
Personalization & Choice
Thomas O'Toole, CMO of UAL Corporation, explains that digital innovation allows a brand to offer a wide range of choices to all customers while giving each customer personalized attention.
Editor's Pick
Travel Customization
Thomas O'Toole, CMO of UAL Corporation, discusses the marketing opportunities available to travel marketers between the time a trip is booked and the time the trip is taken. Customization of the travel experience is facilitated by digital, and marketers have huge opportunities to work with customers during that window of time.