Let your website do the targeting

The instance a user lands on your website, they begin communicating with you. Its not always loud, but if you are listening this will become clear. They speak with their bounce rates, exit pages, entrance pages, site search terms, mouse movement, and many other web actions. This communication is not necessarily a function of generation, but one of context. By trying to focus on who your users are, which is expensive and typically inaccurate, you can lose focus on what really matters, their context. A user’s context drives their intent, and being tuned to that allows you to unlock the Collective Intelligence of your website. No marketing team or focus group with demographic data will be able to match the insight gathered from the collective intelligence on your website.

A Collective Intelligence Powered Site

So what does a site that is powered by its collective intelligence look like? This site will bring the right content to the right users as soon as they land on a website. Each page will recommend the content or products that will most likely result in a successful conversion. Search results will be tuned into the context of the search and reflect usage of the results by monitoring successes and failures of searchers. The Search Marketing strategy of the website will pivot around the keywords used by the users that are driven organically from Google and used in the site search. Landing pages will be dynamically created with the content or products found most useful by users and will update real time to reflect these shifts. eMail marketing campaigns driven by site observations will include clusters of products and content within the same context to increase engagement. Marketers will utilize reporting of the website’s collective intelligence to drive mutli-channel strategies including offline and mobile channels.

Automatic, not Autonomous

Harnessing the collective intelligence is not about creating an autonomous website. It aids marketers in providing a complete user experience that will create customer loyalty and bring users back to the site for future transactions. Solutions that harness the collective intelligence of your site must provide reporting and management interfaces that allow you to apply business rules and push promotional content or products. This mechanism allows you to maintain control of your site while using the collective intelligence to automate laborious and intensive data-driven tasks.

Discover Context, not Identity

Leveraging collective intelligence on the web is about understanding the context of your users through observing their interactions with your website, not their identity. By not requiring demographic information, the act of gathering your site’s collective intelligence is not perceived by your customers as an invasive practice. Therefore, this contextual approach is not only an effective and powerful targeting technique, but it keeps your brand intact by maintaining the trust of your users.