Cammie Dunaway, the Chief Marketing Officer for Yahoo!, spoke to the group about Yahoo!’s marketing strategies in a changing media environment where consumers are constantly “connected” and user generated content is on the rise.
Cammie discussed the term Web 2.0 that Tim O’Reilly recently coined, “Web 2.0 is a second-generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in new ways.” Based on these new developments in online consumption Cammie described the Consumer 2.0 that Yahoo! is now targeting.
Yahoo! Consumer 2.0
- Infinite choices always available on-demand
- Ability to sort through info and customize content to their desires
- Consumers are becoming more empowered and gaining more influence than traditional media companies
- Overworked and overwhelmed
- Looking for community and ability to show off creativity
- The customer is King!
Yahoo! has a half-billion consumers and they all want something different, so Yahoo! must please a half-billion kings. They must develop their marketing strategy to target an empowered individual consumer.
The Yahoo! Consumer 2.0 is always connected with today’s wireless generation. Research shows that consumers with broadband wireless take their computers everywhere:
- 81% take computers into bedroom
- 51% into the kitchen
- and 21% even take their computers into the bathroom
Americans are consuming an average of 10.5 hours of a media a day. Families are consuming so much media simultaneously that Yahoo! research shows families are living the 43 hour day. Personal internet usage for entertainment purposes is also at an all time high of 8.4%. One example that Cammie shared was that during NFL regular season nearly 37 million people spend an average of 50 minutes at work managing their fantasy football teams.
The visitation to blogs has grown significantly in recent years. Over 12 million American adults keep a blog. Overall visitors have risen 60% year over year from 37.8 million unique visits in July 2005 to over 60 million in July 2006. Yahoo! Groups have over 80 million members.
In this new digital on-demand environment Yahoo! has identified 4-Pillars that guide their marketing strategy:
· Search
· Content
· Community
· Personalization
These 4-Pillars are “guideposts for acquiring, engaging and retaining consumers” that has helped shaped Yahoo!’s marketing strategy. These pillars are certainly applicable to more businesses than just Yahoo!.
Cammie shared a video that highlighted consumers leveraging the 4-Pillars to build their own voice through the Yahoo! network, including Yahoo! Video, Yahoo! Groups and Flickr. Consumers have been able to find answers they need, share content and build businesses through the exposure that they’ve received on Yahoo!.
As Russ Klein, CMO of Burger King, discussed yesterday, Cammie also emphasized that sometimes you have to give up some control in order to empower your consumers. Yahoo!’s goal is to put their content in the hands of consumers to and enable them to customize however they desire. Yahoo! has also launched a number of promotions to allow consumers to actively participate and create content for the Yahoo! brand. Participation marketing is all about knowing your best consumers and listening to what they want.
Recent Comments