The new consumers react differently to your marketing messages.

Right in the comfort of his working desk, 24-year-old Jason Khor was staring right through his laptop screen. On his Firefox web browser, he had several tabs opened, each on absolutely different websites he frequently visits. As he tried making a purchase for a T-shirt on the Asos website online, he came across a good deal he wanted to share with his network of friends. He tweeted about it, shared the information on Facebook, and then blogged about the purchase he was about to make. Accordingly, like-minded friends responded to this information, and visited the Asos website to check the deal out.

Jason is the prototype of the fast-changing consumer in today’s world. He interacts with his favourite brands online, and shares such information to his network via social media platforms.

The fast-changing consumers in today’s world are spending most of their time online making the Internet the most viable platform to reach out to them. They are very often media savvy individuals who possess the spending power, and are often empowered to make their own decisions. With more time spent the world wide web, these consumers demand more autonomy over their selected brands, and are more likely to be expressive of their desires and dissatisfactions.

With such behaviours dictating the way brands work, more companies are leveraging on the social media platform to reach out to this target market. Yet, it is no longer about merely having a Facebook page for fans to Like or a Twitter page for Followers, it is about what these brands do on each platform to hook and retain the attention of their target market and customers’ loyalty.

Interactivity is a the key to grabbing the attention of this group of consumers, and by giving them the opportunity to contribute and provide their input with the brand, it increases awareness of the brand among the consumers. Take for example Standard Chartered’s World’s Coolest Intern campaign in 2010. The campaign was essentially a successful cooperation with young social media savvy individuals who were in the running for a position within the company, and having them run a campaign of themselves where they get their friends and networks to vote for them through the various communication channels also increased the awareness of Standard Chartered’s very own new m-Banking facility and online services. It was an effective campaign combining creative and fun strategies that worked well even for a bank.

Similarly, by allowing these consumers the autonomy to control how they want to interact with the brand, it increases the stake that the customer has over the brand. For Miss Tasneem Banu, she experiments around with her desired fashion style on Polyvore, the web’s largest community for fashion and trendsetters. When she sees a style that appeals to her, she will follow suit with an off-line purchase at the retail outlet.

“It lets me know that the brand cares about what I want to see and how I want to see it,” said the 22-year old undergraduate.

The digital age has brought along with it a different way companies should be speaking with their customers. Ultimately, what companies today should realize is that they are speaking to a more educated and more informed group of stakeholders, and thus their strategies need to be more precise in order to charm and convince this group of audience.  As their audience become more connected with one another online, and are able to influence each other’s opinions, brands should invest time and effort in community management to ensure that they are understanding what is being discussed about their brands online. By identifying key opinion leaders within this group too, brands will be able to increase their share of voice and influence over this key target market, and thus affect perception to their brands.

Contributed by Rasyida Samsudin