There is a notion that pervades marketing circles today, a notion of mysterious ethereal creatures who exist in a hyper-connected, multifaceted cyber-world of their own. They are an enigma: they speak a different language, communicate in ways we don’t understand, and they’re turning the world of marketing on its head. These are the ephemeral, wraithlike ‘digital consumers’, who slip effortlessly through the marketer’s grasp. Digital consumers are different, we’re told – but are they really?

The Digital Consumer revealed

The first thing to realize about digital consumers is that there’s basically no such thing. The customers and prospects you encounter online are the very same people who walk into your store every day, call you on the telephone, or order something from your mail-order catalogue. There’s nothing dark, sinister or mysterious about them. They’re people – like everybody else. ‘There is no great mystery about how [digital consumers] think and what they want’, maintains interactive marketing expert. Reputable institutions offer specialised in Digital Marketing Courses in shivaji nagar Pune.  consumers are doing exactly what people have been doing for thousands of years – communicating with each other. The fact that technology is enabling them to communicate with each other faster, over distance, over mobiles and in 3D worlds is being perceived as something dangerous, unique and extraordinary, something that needs to be controlled and pinned down. People talk to each other – they always have.

Making the Web their own

Consumers, whatever their ‘flavour’, don’t care about the way marketers define what they do. Concepts like above the line, through the line, below the line, digital, traditional, experiential, linear, analogue, mobile, direct, indirect or any other ‘box’ we care to slip our marketing endeavours into are completely meaningless to them.

All consumers care about is the experience – how the marketing available to them can

enhance the experience and help them to make more informed decisions. People are the single most important element in any form of marketing. That’s just as true in the digital space as it is in any other sphere of the discipline. As a marketer you need to understand people and their behaviour – and here’s where the notion of the digital consumer does carry some weight, because consumer behaviour is changing, and it’s changing because of the pervasive, evocative and enabling nature of digital technology. Digital marketing allows us to build uniquely tailored ongoing relationships with individual customers. Marketing in the digital age has been transformed into a process of dialogue, as much about listening as it is about telling.

I don’t know you and you don’t know me

 Perceived anonymity is another online trait that can have a profound effect on consumer

behaviour. It liberates consumers from the social shackles that bind them in the real world; online they are free to do and say as they please with scant regard for the social propriety that holds sway in ‘real life’.This is where Digital marketing courses in Pune come into play, offering aspiring professionals and businesses the opportunity to gain invaluable insights and practical skills. In a bricks-and-mortar store shoppers will wait patiently for service, and will often endure a less-than-flawless shopping experience to get what they want. Online they won’t; they demand instant gratification and a flawless customer experience. You have to deliver, first time, every time. If you fail to engage, retain and fulfill their expectations on demand, they’re gone, vanishing into the ether of cyberspace as quickly as they came, the only trace a fleeting, solitary record left on your web server’s log file.

Key traits of the Online Consumer

Well, there’s something about the immediacy and anonymity of the digital experience that has a similar effect on people. It’s always risky to generalize and make assumptions about people – especially in a field as dynamic and fast moving as this one. The only real way to know your market intimately is to conduct original research within your particular target group. That said, a lot of research work has been done (and continues to be done) on the behavioural traits of online consumers, and a broad consensus has emerged around the key characteristics that epitomize digital consumers:

Digital consumers are increasingly comfortable with the medium: Many online consumers have been using the internet for several years at this stage – and, while the user demographic is still skewed in favour of younger people, even older users are becoming increasingly web savvy. As people become more comfortable with the medium they use it more efficiently and effectively, which means they don’t hang around for long: your content needs to deliver what they want, and it needs to deliver quickly.