The typical consumer’s online purchase behavior has skyrocketed in complexity over the past few years. We can attribute this to an ever-growing number of online channels (e.g. microblogging, social networks, video, web apps, etc.) and in particular, an associated explosion of compelling and highly influential peer-generated content. The dramatically increased number of touchpoints and venues for interaction between consumer and brand has in turn has provided marketers with a mass of new opportunities to better identify, target and align with consumers and their interests – but not without also creating new challenges.

Whether it’s learning to juggle priorities or better understanding the vagaries of each new channel and the effect they deliver not just on the consumer, but on other channels as well, marketers are tasked with simultaneously building their brand and also driving response in this fluid and near-real-time environment.  With this new world order, I believe that the Hegelian dialectic of Brand v. Direct Response in online marketing is ripe for redefinition.

For consumers at any stage in a purchase funnel, this increase in number of channels and associated purchase influences has not necessarily resulted in shorter, less concentrated or less meaningful and engaged interactions.  The core effect has instead been realignment. Consumer purchase behavior is now increasingly inclusive of, and influenced by, specific and trusted sources and channels.  Some companies have recognized this evolution, and adapted in order to pinpoint and engage consumers across every channel (e.g., find out where they “live online”). These efforts have been rewarded with more brand-loyalists and roads to new customers paved in shiny gold brick.  Others have continued to rely solely on mass marketing approaches (brand or direct response), which may continue to generate results, but against the backdrop of a dramatic shift in consumer behavior. These efforts may be underperforming against the actual (read: real) market opportunity.

Today, brand advertising may be measured less – or less measurable than before – but it’s still critical to coloring the totality of the (inter)relationship with consumers that comprises the “brand.’  Online marketing activities focused on direct response are measured much more closely and granularly, and are lauded for their results-orientation and performance-based cost characteristics.  While these have been treated largely in the past as two divergent strategic marketing avenues, in the multichannel world, the gap in this “brand v. direct response” continuum is inevitably closing.

These previously divergent foci now need to be integrated, or synthesized, in order to capitalize on a golden opportunity to make the ‘call to action’ a part of the brand.  Online consumers now expect to have channel-specific interactions or engagement with a brand, and particularly in the online world, they also demand the immediate gratification of being able to move quickly and seamlessly from brand-oriented stages (awareness, consideration) to direct response-oriented action (trial, buy)…in one place.

For marketers, identifying and targeting online consumers now, more than ever, requires a multichannel strategy — one which both recognizes this dynamic new landscape (as well as the changes that tomorrow’s innovations will bring) and emphasizes the importance of successful channel-specific tactical implementation. Realignment on the part of marketers on how to target today’s online consumer will help continue to eliminate the gap between brand and direct response.

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