Every time customers initiate a search, they’re sniffing for scent. People hunting for data on the web behave remarkably like animals sniffing out prey. It’s the most effective means of finding a teeny-weeny squirrel in awfully biggish forest.

Preserving and creating intentional scent trails on your site translates to improved ROI for your paid and organic search terms. How well does your site preserve the scent trails your visitors are following?
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Time to start gathering around those virtual fences, o dearly beloved reader – that’s where a lot of marketing action is taking place. Word of mouth, the oldest form of marketing, is shaping up to be the most talked-about trend of 2006. Forward-thinking brands are already racing to encourage and harness consumer-generated media to drive greater business impact.

The proof that word of mouth has hit the mainstream? As Pamela Parker reported, top marketing minds are jumping to word of mouth companies: Jupiter’s Gary Stein has joined word of mouth research firm BuzzMetrics and Forrester’s Jim Nail has joined Cymfony, a company that tracks consumer generated media. And Sam Decker, who led the growth of Dell.com into the world’s largest ecommerce site, has announced he left Dell to join word of mouth startup Bazaarvoice (still in ’stealth’ mode).

I convinced Sam to take a minute out of his hectic schedule to chat with us about the future of consumer-driven marketing.
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