To build effective campaigns, marketers must first understand what people are doing online. Here's how to account for the entire consumer life cycle in your planning process.

Marketers who are still counting clicks are only measuring a minuscule amount of the true value of their online campaigns. As the web continues its evolution, it's becoming increasingly important for marketers to step back and consider the entire consumer life cycle -- not just the moment at which a person makes a purchase.

To understand the current state of online marketing, it helps to consider how the web has changed over the years, says Dean Donaldson, digital experience strategist for Eyeblaster. In Web 1.0, it was all about the content. In Web 2.0, it became about the conversation. And now, as the transition to Web 3.0 becomes more apparent, marketers are increasingly seeing that it's really about the convergence.

But in truth, Donaldson notes, the only real "con" persisting throughout this evolution has been the click.

Indeed, the old theory of "you see, you click, you buy" applies to hardly any consumer experiences online today. Rather, every consumer's path to a purchase is different. Often, those paths include many touchpoints with a brand -- both online and offline -- that ultimately lead to that purchase. Thus, it's important for marketers to understand what their target audiences are doing online.

"If we can understand what consumers are doing, it's going to make us a lot better at creating advertising concepts," Donaldson says. 

Indeed, people come into contact with a variety of media as they make their way through the consumer life cycle, which Donaldson breaks down in this way:

• Awareness: This often involves display advertising, both online an offline, which helps to build a brand within a consumer's mind.
• Consideration: As consumers become more interested in a brand or product, they'll begin to seek out information, perhaps in the form of a microsite.
• Evaluation: Consumers want to learn more, which is where search comes into play.
• Purchase: Consumers make a commitment to their brand or product of choice.
• Retention: Good experiences with a product or company can lead to brand advocacy by the consumer, which in turn leads back to the beginning of the cycle: awareness.

In tracking this complex life cycle, Donaldson notes that marketers need to focus on two questions: What did people see? And what did people do? By planning campaigns and implementing technologies that can help aggregate these data, marketers can gain a better understanding of their customers' paths -- and where along those paths they might be able to step in and shorten the path to conversion. Oftentimes, Donaldson notes, certain high-impact display technologies can help marketers in this sense. For example, rich media campaigns can encourage consumers to interact with an ad where they currently reside online, rather that requiring the dreaded -- and increasingly elusive -- click.

Lori Luechtefeld is editor of iMedia Connection.