What Will Be the New Google?

Sometime in 2012, Google is going to surrender its position as “the” place for search on the internet. I'm quite serious. What will replace it? Chatter marketing engines will. They're going to be the leading source of online customer acquisition, retention and lifetime value sometime over the next year-and-a-half. You've probably never heard of chatter marketing engines because they haven't quite hit the market yet, but you will — and very soon.

Chatter marketing engines work by focusing on keywords and keyword phrases in a way that's similar to how search engines work today. The major exception is that these engines canvas the internet for people taking actions around specific keywords, rather than people having to go to a search engine to type keywords into a box.

In addition, chatter marketing engines match keyword hits to a company's customers and subscribers. Companies can directly tune in to online chatter to identify keywords and keyword phrases as they randomly appear in a multitude of sources and conversations. Then, companies can follow up with keyword hits by integrating targeted marketing messages either directly into the conversation or more personally to specific individuals participating in the conversation.

Chatter marketing can potentially change the marketing paradigm. Combining chatter marketing with fly-on-the-wall technologies brings marketing full circle to the offline networking days. The days where groups of people stood around a room chatting, savvy marketers would hover within earshot to eavesdrop and join conversations where their area of expertise would add value to the conversation, and at the same time generate new customer leads.

Chatter engines also provide marketers with the ability to isolate their company's opt-in subscribers in real time as they participate in chatter conversations. Once subscribers are isolated, the company can market to them differently than they market to the chatter world at large. Companies can effectively communicate with all consumers whose chatter triggers predefined keywords and/or keyword phrases by integrating chitchat directly into conversations. Marketers have more aggressive options however, such as response email which is available to them for marketing to their opt-in subscribers.

When keywords are identified in conversations as coming from people who aren't opt-in subscribers, companies can automatically integrate relevant responses directly into the conversation using chitchat, video chat, recommendation chat, friends and family chat, and/or review chat. For people identified as your subscribers, you have the added weapons of direct email and mobile communications.

Chatter engines will dramatically outperform traditional search engines for another important reason: They will include advanced scoring technology to enable companies to understand not only the interests of people as they relate to keywords, but also identify the relative strength of each subscriber's desire for that company's particular product/service, from mildly interested to obsessed. Companies can then predict a time frame in which a purchase is most likely to occur.

As people begin to research purchase decisions more and more intensely, specific keywords and keyword phrases begin to pop up with greater frequency in conversations. Consumers will visit keyword-relevant web pages, ask keyword-relevant questions in social networks and user groups, view keyword-relevant photos, talk to keyword-relevant experts, and so on. As a marketer, you're able to develop a clear sense of when someone is kicking the tires vs. when they're obsessed with getting the information they need to make an educated buying decision.

Your company's ability to integrate the right messages into the conversation at the right time to influence the purchase decision will create opportunities for it to win sales. It's a big challenge, but chatter marketing engines will simplify the process to a great extent. And Google will hardly be in the equation at all!

Neil Rosen is founder and CEO of eWayDirect, a provider of strategic e-marketing solutions and services. Neil can be reached at neil@ewaydirect.com.