ONLINE MARKETING Has the Intention Economy Finally Arrived?
By Alan Gleeson U
S author, Doc Searls first coined the phrase ‘The Intention Economy’ back in 2006, describing how “the
buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer’s purchase”.
He went on to give an example how;
“In The Intention Economy, a car rental customer should be able to say to the car rental market, “I’ll be skiing in Park City from March 20-25. I want to rent a 4-wheel drive SUV. I belong to Avis Wizard, Budget FastBreak and Hertz 1 Club. I don’t want to pay up front for gas or get any insurance. What can any of you companies do for me?” — and have the sellers compete for the buyer’s business.”
The appeal of what Searls describes is obvious - an empowered customer who can clearly signal their requirements and have their exact needs met by suppliers, is a compelling proposition for both parties.
Businesses benefit from ‘intention marketing’ - where customers are marketed to individually in response to a signal of purchase intent - as it can significantly reduce their customer acquisition costs. Customers benefit as their individual needs can be more closely met. The resultant cost savings are also likely to lead to customers securing more favourable
28 entrepreneurcountry
terms than would be the case in the traditional ‘one size fits all’ advertising led model.
The above is all set in the context of an online marketing model which is under increasing pressure. Most Internet users are getting more and more jaded with the incessant interruption based nature of online advertising. As Jeffrey Rayport argues; “In this media-saturated world, advertising strategies built on persuading through interruption, repetition, and brute ubiquity are increasingly ineffective”.
Others cite growing privacy concerns as consumer data is increasingly used to enable effective targeting. For example, in Austria browsers with ‘Do Not Track’ functionality are becoming increasingly popular, and in the US, Mozilla (makers of Firefox) have recently announced they will easily allow users to disable third party tracking software.
In many respects, the emergence of the ‘intention economy’ represents a natural evolution in modern marketing. In recent years, Google Ad Words has transformed the advertising industry, partly because
it
for an offering. Niche businesses finally have a cost effective way to target a market that was previously invisible (or was difficult to access, cost effectively). Those with bigger budgets can target generic terms where purchase
signaled more weakly but where they want to create brand awareness early on in the decision making process. And finally marketers can definitively answer questions related to the ROI on their marketing spend.
This is all in stark contrast to traditional advertising where the approach was a lot less focused and the old Wanamaker adage ran true ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.’
has enabled
businesses to target customers based on purchase intent (as deduced from what they are searching for). Advertisers can hence spend money on highly targeted prospects who have signaled a strong potential need
And as we have seen above, online advertising faces increasing challenges. If intention marketing does take off, and the push back against online advertising continues, the implications for traditional online advertising will be profound. For once, the online advertising industry is looking a little vulnerable.
intent may be
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