Headline: Chasing virtual customers – and real cash – online

When asked to describe their customers, most marketers fall back on easy generational labels. Baby Boomers. Generation X. Generation Y. This nomenclature helps companies decide exactly how to communicate with individuals conveniently dropped into categories by their age.

With the Internet, easy is gone. Perhaps the greatest possible marketing cultural shift is underway with the blossoming of Generation Virtual, also known as Generation V. Unlike traditional “generations,” Generation V defies all typical boundaries and descriptions, such as age, gender, income and geography.

Instead, members of Generation V can be categorised based on demonstrated achievement, accomplishments, and a desire to use digital media to both learn and share information.

These data-oriented folks have wrested power away from the very companies trying to impress them with their marketing efforts. As a result, by 2015, companies will spend more money marketing and selling to multiple anonymous online personas than marketing and selling offline, according to Gartner, Inc.

Yes, anonymous. Imagine marketing to a virtual online persona. No, this isn’t the same as selling to a ghost or an imaginary being. Companies must move away from marketing to known quantities, instead gearing their communications to unknown current and potential customers.

To accomplish this, companies will need to reach out to customers where they want to learn and play online, whether on blogs, online communities or gaming sites. And rather than gathering information about individual customers online, they will need to develop an understanding around customer behaviours, as well as how customers influence others.

This news may come as a shock to C-level executives in large companies, which have invested millions in an attempt to build customer profiles and “discover” individuals who use their products via the web. But according to many analysts, uncovering customers’ identities soon will be irrelevant.

Demographics will mean nothing. Psychographics will mean everything. Keep an eye out for some members of Generation V. They can provide an initial window into the way this cultural online change will work. Generation V members:

• -  Use technology every day to communicate without geographic boundaries. Also, these people see technology as a natural means of communication – not as “technology” in and of itself.
• -  Are compelled to get involved in global communities through two-way participation, rather than simply consuming data.
• -  Believe in meritocracy, where information sharing increases value rather than diminishing it.