Last week we attended Search Engine Strategies New York, the online marketing conference and expo, and one theme that kept coming up in various contexts was the concept of real value. Different industries talk about it different way: in economics it’s “utility”, in customer relations it’s “satisfaction”, but the idea is the same: businesses and consumers alike are paying more attention to each dollar that they spend and how it benefits them.

Among consumers, that means brand loyalty is waning as people search for better deals, perhaps reevaluating and switching brands, or even going with generics. Among businesses, it means focusing more on ROI, and making sure your service providers are getting the right kind of results and giving you the metrics to back them up.

It’s a familiar concept at Blue Fountain Media; we’ve always held ourselves accountable for the success of our clients, focusing on your goals, and only recommending solutions that will yield a return on investment. We enjoy working with clients who feel the same way about their own customers. It was nice to have our strategy validated by others, like keynote speaker John Gerzema, who spoke about the erosion of trust, about the lack of permanence of institutions that used to appear untouchable, but ultimately about the opportunity that the crisis has created for smart companies. It’s a win for the consumer, and a win for businesses willing to take a step back, and make sure that they’re adding value that’s worth paying for.