Typical digital marketing revolves around a drive to get more traffic, no matter what. Social media and viral marketing, search marketing, e-mail marketing (not spam), spam, banner ads, pay-per-click marketing—name the method, and 98 per cent of marketers use them as blunt instruments in a get-all-the-traffic-and-hope-for-the-best kind of way. Never mind whether that traffic represents truly qualified potential customers. Never mind the cost of driving useless traffic. Just keep them coming!
Everyone—marketing professionals and scholars alike—is to blame for this. We’ve all said “More traffic!” at least once in our careers. In traditional media—print, television, and such—it made sense to start off with this approach. But digital marketing is different, and much more powerful. It’s a two-way street. That means we can interact with our customers, and select traffic rather than accumulate it. That’s what this session is about.

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Dr Tom van Laer is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Cass Business School and a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research appears in premier and leading academic journals. Tom’s publications reflect his interest in storytelling, social media, and consumer behaviour. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at ESCP Europe Business School and a visiting scholar at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He holds a doctorate in marketing (PhD) from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Though Tom has won awards for his academic research, teaching, and media exposure, he still counts winning his high school’s story-reading competition in 1995 as his most impressive accomplishment.